She Who Skitters in Darkness
by gibbousmoons
Summary: Seven hours, a snow day, and a single shard. Is that all it takes to doom a world? Welcome to unlife, Taylor Hebert, day caste Abyssal. Yes, that's one of the nasty kinds. It's a good thing she's such a nice girl, right? Worm/Exalted cross.
1. Consent and Car

I do not own the properties this is based on. This is based on Worm, a fantastically good web serial, and if you're reading this, you really should look it up, but it's also based on White Wolf's Exalted. It is primarily hosted, like most of my fanfic, on the Spacebattles forums, so look there for faster updates.

-SWSiS-

Thursday is the first day back from winter vacation, and I was finally able to walk into the halls of the school without being afraid of my tormenters. They'd slowed, then stopped as the weather grew colder, and I'd even made friends with one of them. It was nice. Wonderful, really.

I'd brought my books home over break, so I didn't have to linger in the halls to use my locker. No sense in tempting fate. The day went by without incident, Sophia and her group completely ignored me, and Emma and I ate lunch together. So when I opened my locker, only to receive a heavy push in the back that sent me sprawling forward into a heap of month old pads and tampons, I wasn't able to react until the door was already closed behind me. Laughter and conspiratorial whispers strain in through the narrow slits at the top of the metal door, but they ignore my fists slamming on the locker, my cries for help.

Emma, my now firmly former best friend, leaves after a minute. "I have better things to do than check for trash." She taunts, and the other two girls leave with her.

No one comes except the janitor, mopping floors and picking up trash, and he doesn't hear either. Dad always said earbuds would turn you deaf.

The hallway goes dark through the tiny slits, and I desperately press my face against the only source of untainted air in the claustrophobic locker, but eventually I fall asleep, unable to remain awake any longer. When I wake, the hall is lit, but not with the bright fluorescents, with dim sunlight coming in the window at the end of the hall. Daylight.

No one comes for me.

No one notices me.

No one cares, except my father.

Danny isn't here.

Eventually, sometime before night comes again, I fall asleep.

On the third day, the hall is bright and bodies fill it, but I'm too weak to move, my throat's too parched to make a sound. I breathe in, one last time-

Darkness. A shape more massive than belief moves with a yet larger shape across a penlight speckled background, but the lights are stars and the shapes are like scaled worms, shedding shards as they move through the cosmos until they come to rest over and around a green/blue world. Thousands on thousands of bright shards of light fall to Earth, until the great worm is a fraction of its former self, and it too falls.

It falls because its partner is dead. Inconceivable, the death is. Such a many-faceted thing was not meant to die. But it did. It's hierarchy of shards lies fragmented and decaying, lingering as a festering wound even as its least parts continue.

In the dark, far away and right behind me, thirteen shadows feel a world that lives as it connects to the world that died, reach out along the dimensional boundaries, and find a single pinhole in the barrier between, through which a golden light shines.

And they _**hate**_ it.-

Everything stops, voices, footsteps, the breathe in my lungs. Then a voice speaks in the darkness below, crawling up my legs and vibrating in my bones, speaking without a proper sound.

**"Do you wish to live?"**

I know I shouldn't, that I really should just let go and move on, escaping from the bullying in the simplest way, but I nod to her delusion's question, and my lips move.

**"Then from this day forth, then, Taylor Hebert is no more." **

As the words echo in my ears my head begins to ache as if I've been pushed down the stairs again, and failed to catch myself.

**"She who Skitters in Shadows, know you serve the Mask of Winters before all others, know you have paid a price for this honor, but it is one more than fair. You who long for the bliss of nothingness, you who seek adulation and power, you who dream of victory. Know death, know glory, know that we. Shall. Prevail." **

A circle burns within a circle that sears my eyes, and a voiceless scream tears out of my throat. Then all is still, and my eyelids drift closed. Darkness takes me.

XIXI

It's a beautiful night. The moon is overhead, the sea breeze brings the scent of salt and brine to my nose from the mouth of the bay, and my bare feet can't feel the cold snow that I crunch as I walk home.

I come to an intersection, and squint to make out the signs. The street light overhead is flickering, dim. Dying.

**"She Who Skitters in Shadows." **The voice, the Mask of Winters, I correct myself, speaks behind me.

"I don't know who you're talking to, or who you are, or what you're doing" I begin to jog. Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away?

When he speaks again, the words are unnatural, warped grotesquely as they slither into my ears, and I collapse to my knees and bury my head in my hands. **"Taylor Hebert. You will listen." **My head is dragged up as if pulled by a string. The shadows on the brick wall to my right change, taking the outline of a man eight feet tall, covered in black armor wrought with a pair of concentric circles I recognize from earlier, a single massive eye. Each word falls like a hammer on my back, driving me further down even as the shadow's grip on my hair holds my head to meet its eye. **"She Who Skitters in Shadows, I give you your order. You are my first agent on this world, and you seek glory, do you not? Take your glory from the death of nations. Seek fame in the rush of battle. Cast down the mighty beneath your feet, and ruin the world that held you down, forced you to suffer for its amusement!" **

Silence rings in my ears, and I swallow nervously. I close my eyes.

"No." I whisper, words dragged from my lips despite the raw terror of the mask before me. I continue to speak, face flush as I admit what I've dreamed about for so long, each word forced out with an effort of will that leaves my arms shaking, my legs limp beneath me, but I speak to the monster, and I say, "I want to be a hero." Horrible visions flash into my mind, Brockton Bay razed by a shockwave, drowned beneath the waves, and torn apart by internal power struggles. "I won't do it. I'm not that kind of person. I want to help, not hurt."

When he speaks again, the harsh voice doesn't say what I expect at all, a hint of a laugh staining his menace. **"Then seek glory in the death of your enemies." **

And then the pressure is gone, the shadow is just a shadow, and I'm alone again, kneeling in the snow. My forehead is bleeding, dripping blood in a perfect empty circle on the ground where I was kneeling.

This won't work, face bloody, shocked, barefoot, covered in blood and worse things from the locker. I can't even remember getting out of it, and now I'm on the other side of town, the north end near the boat graveyard. How did I get here?

"I can't go home like this." I realize. I can't risk hurting my dad because, apparently, I'm mad. I turn east and begin the walk to the water's edge, ignoring how the buildings' shadows stretch out to cover me, and my feet don't feel the freezing snow.

"What a wonderful night to go crazy."

I must move through the streets of the Docks in a daze, mind wandering in circles as my feet take me to familiar places, because I don't remember the names of the streets I move through. The market is deserted this time of night, wooden stalls and larger roofed areas line the street by the bay, abandoned. The ferry sits just visible down the slope to the water, from where I stand. Bright paint barely visible through the thick coat of white snow that blankets, well, everything.

The old sight calms me down, and I crack a smile for the first time in. . . It is days, isn't it?

The ferry has been there for as long as I can remember, a big friendly giant of a ship that can't get the parts it needs to do what it wants to. I wonder what it would look like detached from the dock, carrying crowds of people from north to south across the bay, but that'll never happen. Dan's always told me that the city council would never approve the budget needed, wouldn't run the risk of contaminating their perfect tourist trap boardwalk, their picture perfect city, their-

Deep breath, Taylor, deep breaths. No need to get worked up about the way things are, I'll be a cape soon, not a politician. I relax, and let the wooden railing my hands were gripping fall to the ground in rotten chunks. "Ugh." I grunt, and step away from the stall. Sandy's Sea Shak, the sign calls it.

"Maybe they should replace the railing, but I think the 'c' is a more severe problem. What do you think?" Someone's behind me!

I whirl around to face him, then stop. It's a cape, one of the Wards stationed locally. White costume, full body with a visor over his face. "Clockblocker?" I hazard, alarm forgotten and replaced with shock.

I wish I said something witty next, or something about not having a mask, or wanting to join the Wards because I was a parahuman, but I didn't. Instead, my first impression on the serious cape community of Brockton Bay, and the wider world, is when I tell the second-in-command of a cape team, "I think I'm crazy."

"People are crazy, it's a common sentiment in your condition." He snaps back wryly, then his body language changes. He's more focused. "You're not wearing shoes, hold on a moment." Clockblocker reaches down and fiddles with a pouch on the side of his utility belt. "I really need to get this pouch replaced." He grumbles, then shrugs, giving opening the white container up as a lost cause. "I don't suppose you have a phone?"

I shake my head. "This is surreal."

"You're telling me, Shadow Girl?" Clockblocker walks next to me, opens a different pouch, and pushes something against the doorknob of Sandy's Sea Shak. The lock clicks, and he opens the door.

"Shadow Girl?" I follow him inside.

As he searches along the walls for a light switch, the masked teen, he must be my age, replies. "Well yeah, official members of the cape-wearing community get to make up names for the members who didn't announce theirs on national media. It's one of the perks, like discount beachwear."

I flip the switch to my left, illuminating rows on rows of gaudy plastic souvenirs. Clockblocker tosses me a pair of red galoshes, then presses a button on the receipt till, printing off about a foot of paper. "I owe you one pair of garish boots. -Clockblocker."

"How can you tell, that I'm a parahuman?" I blurt out, "I don't remember much."

Clockblocker sets the note on the keypad of the cash register, then shrugs at me. "Well, I was minding my own business in the monitor room when I noticed a blur walking south down the boardwalk, so I called Aegis up and came over to see what I could see. And when I get here, you're just all faded into the shadows! Sorry about not noticing you were barefoot right off, but you were really blurry in dark like that." He seems nervous all of a sudden. "Just, ah, don't mention that I didn't spot that right off? It'd be a favor from a future teammate."

"Teammate?" And just when I'm about to get a handle on the situation, I'm reduced to monosyllables again. Wonderful.

Clockblocker looks me carefully up and down, or at least his head moves up and down. "Well yeah. You haven't tried to attack me yet, and that means you're at least open to the idea of not turning into some kind of degenerate street bum supervillain lurking around the streets at night. What do you say I get this pouch unjammed, call for pickup, and you can stay in the guest quarters and sleep it over?" He pauses, "After a shower."

Floored by my sudden change of fortunes, I can only nod in the bright lights overhead, my face stretching into a wide grin. "Yes, I mean of course!" I beam, but the Ward isn't looking at me anymore, instead looking behind my back, and I suddenly feel a prick of pain as a knife touches my lower back, and a hand grabs my hair and pulls until my back is arched, and I'm trying desperately not to impale myself on the blade.

"As a supposed degenerate member of society myself, I can honestly say that I'd rather be a thief, than a lesionous ballsack like yourself." Brown teeth click together inches from my face, and I can see the mask that covered his face from the nose up.

I recognize his face from the news broadcasts that warn people to stay away from the boat graveyard near dark, but I can't put a name to the man. His canine tooth has a crack, I note. "Well here I was, wandering down the boardwalk with my good friends here, when I noticed sweet piece wandering, alone and so clearly wishing for the services I can provide."

"Skidmark." Clockblocker says flatly, "I thought you were smarter than this." He steps forward. "Put her down. You need an arm free to use your power, and you can't keep hold of her and keep me off you at the same time. Why make this harder than it has to be?"

Skidmark growls. "Well why don't you shove your hands up your loose ass? _I've_ got backup."

He jerks his head to the side in a gesture, and I hear the wooden floor creak as if overburdened. I hope this doesn't end with the floor breaking, I think as a tall man squeezes up behind me. He's big, not just tall but wide, and his arms and legs are made of a hodgepodge assortment of gears and pistons.

"The name's Trainwreck." He grinds out. "And I'm why he ain't droppin the knife."

Clockblocker switches his gaze between Skidmark and Trainwreck, and reorients himself. "Why are you even on the boardwalk, Skidmark? This is pretty heavy territory for Empire 88." He tries a new tack.

"Well, you see it's kind of none of your sodding business!" Skidmark snaps out, spittle flying. "I can take my new muscle wherever I want!" With a sudden, manic heave, the arm holding my hair whips right, and he slings me into Trainwreck's waiting arms as he points his hands at the floor and tables!

Two-toned lines are painted into existence where he point, and I see the miscellaneous junk in Sandy's Sea Shak near them fly in waves towards Clockblocker. "Take the girl to the car, Trainwreck, and give her a hit!"

Clumsy metal fists close around my arms, catching me and holding me still, and a hand-sized hatch on the right arm slides open with a hiss, revealing the telltale gleaming shape of a needle. "Hold still." Trainwreck says, but I'm not listening to him, I'm back at school.

Hands hold me down as someone rustles through my backpack, searching for anything that I have that I don't 'need'. A leg sweeps my own as I take the first step down a flight of stairs, and I spill downward. The dragonblooded before me ignites his anima banner, and months of notes on motic studies are incinerated in an instant's cruelty.

I snap back into my body filled with an icy fire.

"No." The needle breaks on my skin, and my forehead stings with pain. "I am _not_ a victim!" I strain against Trainwreck's grip, struggling to free myself, but I can't budge his mechanical limbs. The chill of power again floods through me, my arms, and I almost manage to pry his fingers off of one arm before they clamp down again, metal circling entirely around my arms.

I need to get away, I need to get away, I need to-

Get away.

I trail black smoke as I take a step backwards, slipping from Trainwreck's grasp like I was never there, and reform three feet away, just behind Skidmark's back, and dark fire erupts from my body as the light overhead flickers and dies, leaving the shop illuminated in the uncanny uncanny greys and blacks cast by my new aura.

What kind of powers are these? I wonder for a moment, stunned by the sheer variety of them. Some kind of shadow empowerment?

While I was held by Trainwreck, the flow of the fight had continued to move in Skidmark's favor. A loose wall of timestopped objects hang as a makeshift shield, three unfolded umbrellas shielding the young hero from most of the flying debris.

I can help, I realize. I have powers, I can help. I can be a hero.

It's an astonishing feeling, the knowledge that my life is about to change, to move beyond the rut I've been stuck in for so long.

It feels like cold fire flooding my arms as I shove a table full of beany babies into Skidmark's back, and pin him to Clockblocker's umbrella shield.

A white-gloved hand reaches out from the barrier, and taps the villain on the nose. "Frozen one." Clockblocker steps sideways and throws a spool of colored plastic cord in an underhanded toss over my shoulder. It doesn't fall, instead hanging in midair. "And frozen two. Not bad, if I do say so myself." I can hear him smiling behind his tinted visor. "And I even managed to remember to call for help once things got messy, so I'm going to count this as a solid win."

I can't help it, I'm smiling so hard my mouth hurts. "Is it always like this?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I'm kind of not a fan of fair fights, so yeah, if I have any say in things fights get ended real quick like this one." He tosses me a pair of handcuffs. "See if you can find anything on Trainwreck that that'll attach to, will you?"

"Right. Sure." I say, still beaming, and follow the floating line of plastic to where the spool ends, caught in Trainwreck's hand.

"And put on those boots! Seriously, I'm not kidding about that. It's cold out, if you've somehow missed that."

"Oh." I had, somehow, not noticed how cold I was, in an abstract sort of way. I still noticed that I was cold when I was walking through the snowy streets, but I'm not _cold_. "How long until help gets here?" If I recall correctly, Clockblocker's power has a random duration, and there have been sightings of it wearing off in under a minute.

"About now, actually." The hero says, and points out the window. "See that light getting closer? That's a helicopter we can requisition to get around if a patrol needs backup." He looks at me, scanning up and down again. "Kind of weird how I can still see you through the aura thing. Can you turn that off?"

I kick the ground uncomfortably. "No, I'm- kind of new at this."

"That's all right." I get the feeling that Clockblocker's smiling at a joke I'm not getting. "You're in for some drastic changes. Things will happen that you don't understand, and that's okay. I remember when I first got my power! Whenever I touched things, they just stopped moving!"

"How did you figure out how to stop your power?" I ask, curious and eager for any hints I could use. "Because this is kind of awkward. I'm still not sure if the flames will actually burn things or not."

Clockblocker turns to look at me as the helicopter lands on the boardwalk outside, and deliberately puts his hand on my shoulder. "Looks safe to me."

As he exits the building, Clockblocker raises a hand in greeting to a red and gold cape arriving on a hoverboard, and a young girl steps out of the helicopter, wearing a teal breastplate. Two other capes exit the chopper soon after, one in red and brown, and the other in some kind of silvery armor.

Red and gold on Tinker tech, which means that one's Kid Win, a fairly powerful Tinker, which means he changes his gear fairly often. He likes to stay mobile and use his laser pistols, I think.

The young girl must be Vista, who's been a local cape for two years, since she was eleven. She's a Shaker, able to manipulate the world around her to compress and elongate space.

Aegis wears red and brown, and he's the local Alexandria-type. He can fly, and has some kind of unique biology that gives him increased staying power and strength, the paranet doesn't agree on the specifics, with some arguing for regeneration and some for injury negation.

The boy in the armor is Gallant, I know for sure. He can fire emotionally charged energy blasts, and wears a suit of Tinker tech made by Armsmaster, the local Protectorate's Tinker member.

I sort of hang back by the door, and keep an eye on Skidmark and Trainwreck.

Comparing the Wards' pristine costumes to my own clothes, I can't help but feel out of place. Armor plating and futuristic fabrics, all in bright hues and bold cuts, would make a stark contrast with my normal jeans and baggy sweatshirts when they're clean. Now?

Shirt stained with blood and worse, pants even more disgusting, barefoot, my once lustrous hair matted and tangled, and doubtless my skin is covered in more dried blood and products. I step out of the still-functioning floodlight outside the shop and relax back into the shadows.

Things would go back to normal now, surely. Clockblocker and the rest would swoop down from above for a while, but like the larger than life heroes they were, they'd be gone as soon as the supervillains were in custody, leaving me alone again.

Humiliated again.

The black flames around me have faded to a slight flicker on my skin, and as I watch they fade completely, though my face still feels sticky, and a little painful. There's no point in putting off the inevitable, though, so I square my shoulders and begin to walk over to where Clockblocker is talking to Vista and Aegis.

As I approach, I realize that maybe I shouldn't interrupt them while they're talking, and I just manage to make out him saying, ". . . so I'm just saying that she really helped me out of a rough spot, and it would be a great thing if she could sleep in the guest room tonight, and make up her mind once she's rested, because she doesn't look like she's got somewhere, and really even if she. . ."

I stop. Oh. They're talking about me. A morbid part of me, the same part that makes me stand and listen to the snide comments at school, makes me listen in as unobtrusively as I can.

"I didn't get much, but she still seems kind of out of it, probably just triggered. Didn't even have shoes on, and she's covered in. . . stuff. I'm just saying that she's not going to kill us all in our sleep, no matter what she looks like."

Aegis holds up a hand. "Hold on, I didn't say she can't get to grips with things, spend some time away from it all- we do have guest rooms for stuff like this, and I'm not going to make you rescind your offer, but just ask us next time, all right?"

Vista slugs Clockblocker in his side, and he winces. "Yeah, you just _do_ things sometimes, and we're a team."

I take another step forward, leaving the shadow that had stretched to hide me. "Really?" I ask, and the three heroes visibly jump. "I didn't mean to startle you." I backpedal verbally. "I just, I can really spend the night?"

Vista looks at Clockblocker. Clockblocker looks at Aegis. Aegis puts his finger to a darker metal panel on the side of his helmet, then doesn't respond for the longest five seconds of my life, during which he must have been talking to someone.

Then he nods. "Sure, hop in the 'copter with the vets here, and they'll take you up. I'll hitch a ride on a PRT transport after we're done with these two." Aegis nods to his teammates, then walks past me into the building containing the two time-stopped villains.

As he walks by, he rests his hand on my shoulder and says, "Good job in there. Hopefully I'll get to work with you later."

Then he's gone.

The massive shape of the Protectorate headquarters looms overhead as I watch the approach from the side windows of the helicopter. There really is no other way to describe it but looming. I'm sure that whatever cape designed it meant it to inspire awe in those in everyone who looked at it, but maybe this was a little too much?

"It's a little big." I say to Clockblocker over the shortrange radio headset I'd been given for the ride over. Helicopters are loud.

Vista bursts out laughing from the seat across from me, and the hero beside me shoots her a look. "Sure, laugh it up Vista." He shrugs. "Everything looks big to her, because she's so- hey! Not in the flying metal deathtrap!"

I hadn't noticed Clockblocker's seat twisting downwards until it moved back to its original place. "Sorry." Vista said, chagrinned.

"It's all right, no harm no foul?" I smile at her, and she smiles back.

"Yeah, just don't tell the director."

"Sure."

I look back out of the window, and ask, "I never really grasped how _big_ it is, before. Do you really need that much space?"

Vista gestures to Clockblocker, and he fields it. "Not really. Protectorate guidelines are structured after government regulations, the PRT runs control over us, you know? So in their wisdom, they decided to build the biggest structure they could, because they couldn't be sure how much space each cape would really need back in the eighties when they built this place. Kid Win's got a line he likes to use for that question, but I'll let you get it from the source when he gets back."

The helicopter lands in a clear stretch of asphalt in front of the towering building, and I wait for Vista to finish clambering out before I follow. Clockblocker shoots a thumbs up to the PRT officer in the pilot's seat, and I give a kind of half-hearted wave. "Come on, Shadow Girl, follow me to your temporary accommodations!"

He led us to the large glass doors in the front of the building, and I jump when a red light, like a bar code scanner comes out of an indentation in the doorframe, reading Clockblocker, Vista, and me. Vista says, "Vista, Clockblocker, and guest parahuman Shadow Girl." After a slight pause, the door clicks, and Clockblocker pushes it open, then ushers us inside.

"As you can see, there has been no waste in the construction of this building." He intones, arm sweeping up and to the side. "The dramatically vaulted ceiling impresses up to hundreds of tourists daily in the busy season, and most of the remaining space is taken up by the Parahuman Response Team's regional headquarters, as you can see as we move to the elevator that will take us to the top floor, where there are bedrooms with their own baths, a communal room, and Kid Win's labs."

"Labs, plural?" I ask again.

My confusion must be showing in my eyes, because Vista answers me. "He can explain himself in the morning. You look like you're almost ready to drop, and not all of us enjoy staying up until three A.M., Clockblocker."

"Sure. See you tomorrow, it's the weekend and everything's been closed all week because of the snowstorm, so the patrol schedule should be light."

"All week?" I ask. "That can't be right, it was Thursday."

Vista pats my back. "Don't worry about it. Guest room's right over there, so just wash off and get a good night's sleep. Things'll be better in the morning."

I do as she says, not having any real alternatives. The bathroom is clean, white tile covers everything. The mirror takes up half the wall, above a large sink on the opposite end from the bath.

"Maybe this is all a dream, and I'll wake up." I say to myself.

There's a fuzzy washcloth draped over the faucet, and I wet it, then wipe it over my face, rinsing and repeating until it comes back clean, and not red and brown. Then I look up to inspect myself for cuts.

I don't recognize the girl in the mirror.

-Interlude One-

"All right, Clockblocker, what have you got for us?" Aegis asks, voice slightly hushed but still carrying in the domed room the Wards called headquarters.

"You know she can't hear us, right?" Kid Win says while he glances at the row of doors on the far side of the large room. Then he cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, "The walls are soundproof!"

Gallant stands up and walks over to the whiteboard on wheels he'd brought to the collection of chairs as soon as he'd gotten back. "Enough of that. Aegis has a point, and so does Kid Win, there's no need to push our luck by shouting. What can you tell us about what happened?"

Clockblocker runs his fingers through his red hair, then picks his visor back up and sockets it in. "I first saw our guest on the security cams on the more southern part of the Boardwalk/Docks area. I called for backup to come to the op center, then I went to investigate. When I arrived I noticed she had no shoes on, was covered in filth, and seemed all around out of it."

Vista speaks up. "Like she'd just had a trigger event."

"Exactly, right." Clockblocker replied, nodding. "I heard he say she thought she was going crazy, and told her people were crazy, and that she shouldn't worry about it."

"Trying to score with _that?_" Shadow Stalker says. "You really must be-"

"Stow it." Gallant interrupts. "Shadow Stalker, I won't have that kind of byplay on my team."

With a growl and a contemptuous flick of her cloak, the Brockton Bay Wards' newest member lurches to her feet and storms toward the elevator. "-Like I have a choice." They hear her hiss before the doors close.

"So~" Vista drawls. "Rookie's got issues."

"Leave it alone, it's none of our business." Gallant says levelly. "Clockblocker?"

"Well, I got her a pair of boots to wear, and had just finished writing the IOU when Skidmark got the drop on her, grabbed her and put a knife to her back."

"Illegal entry and the hostage suite, then. Got it." Vista says, and scrawls the words down on a whiteboard.

"Then banter happened, and he tossed her to a new Cape." Everyone straightened up and listened more intently. "Trainwreck's the one with the mechanical arms and legs. Once his hands were free, Skidmark started shooting junk off the shelves at me, and I made a barrier to hide behind until he ran out of things to throw."

"So how'd you take Trainwreck?" Aegis asks.

Clockblocker smirks behind his visor. "I didn't. Somehow Shadow Girl got out of his grip and slammed Skidmark in the back with a table, and then I tagged Trainwreck. You showed up a bit after."

"Security tapes show she turned into wisps of smoke, and right about then that black fire started burning around her." Kid Win comments.

Vista writes, "Brute/Shifter (?/?)" on the other side of the whiteboard. "Pretty nice power set." She says.

"Good, good." Gallant says, then asks Kid Win, "What about on your end?"

"Good news and bad news." The red and gold hero says. "Good news is that we've got three juvenile female missing persons cases open right now. First is a Chinese girl, but inside word with the Protectorate says they found the remains outside an Empire 88 hangout three days ago. Second is a preteen, so no go there either. Third is closest.

"Taylor Hebert was last seen on Thursday of last week, at her high school. Interviews with school staff showed no problems on record, and her friend Sofia Hess thinks she may have run away because of problems at home. Apparently she went into a depression when her mother died earlier this year."

"Sounds like that might be her. What did she look like?" Gallant asked.

Kid Win, though, shook his head. "Brunette matches, but I'd like to see the person that called her 'plain'. Both are taller than average for girls, too. But here's the bad news, our guest can't be Taylor Hebert, because a janitor found the corpse stuck in her locker at school just three hours ago."

-SWSiD-

The girl in the mirror has pale skin, paler than mine, almost as pale as an albino's, though I can't see veins through it. Her face is thin, traces of adolescent fat stripped away, leaving fine bones on a face that I barely recognize. A few things still match, I suppose. The mirror-girl's eyes are still the brown I remember, and the nose is only a little slimmer, a little straighter, but this isn't my face.

"I'm dreaming. I've just got to be." That's it, that explains it. The whole thing with the Wards' headquarters, the powers, the sudden loss of time, I must just be going crazy, which makes so much more sense than apparently being offered a position as a _superhero_ and beating an honest-to-god _supervillian_ by hitting him with a table. A surprisingly light table.

I focus, and slap the sink. Hard.

"Ah!" That hurt!"

The sink, surprisingly, is still in one piece, and I'm reminded of Clockblocker's explanation about how long it took him to get control of his ability. It hurt to hit the sink, so I can't be dreaming. A coldly rational part of me tells the rest that I'm chasing circles in my thoughts, and not making proper sense like good logic should. I pull my hand from where I'd rested it on the sink, and it pulls loose after a moment's stickiness.

"I need a fucking bath." I say to myself in sudden realization, then stop. Swearing like that isn't like me, Taylor Hebert. It would disappoint my dad if I got into that kind of habit, even if I am crazy. So I ought to just use the nice, large bath I can see right over there.

Provided that it's not another hallucination, as my trigger event has left me obviously insane.

But I can't go around thinking things like that, or I'd never get clean, so I turn the water in the shower on as hot as I can, take off my clothes, and step inside.

Like the cold snow, I can tell that the water's hot, intellectually, but it doesn't have the same knee-jerk response it did almost a week ago. Steam rises around me, and I begin the arduous task of scraping off the accumulated dried and rotted blood and fluids of dozens of pads and tampons.

Yes, I needed this.

The hot water is calming as it beats down on me, washing away the stress of the past however long it's been.

The washcloth makes quick work of the encrusted stuff, and soon I'm standing in front of the mirror again, skin just as pale as it'd been stepping into the shower, if now much cleaner, and I see the final, damnable piece of evidence.

The girl in the mirror has my hair, the same long locks of curling black hair that I've always maintained as the sole sign of my femininity. The body is nearly the same as well. The proportions of my various parts feel about the same to my grasping hands, but the connecting areas are more- streamlined.

I look like a runner, someone who's been exersizing, and well.

I look like _Sophia_.

CRACK! A jagged line splits the mirror in two from top to bottom, the lights overhead dim for an instant before snapping back to life, and I quickly leave the bathroom for bed.

I don't sleep well.

My dreams are full of news coverage, a calm anchorman narrating the death tolls of the latest Endbringer attack, a woman with tears streaming down her face as she recites the report about the aftermath of Kyoto, A wide-eyed young man stammers that Nilbog has been sighted taking a walk around the walls of his city.

A man with a grinning mask made of jagged ice is behind me, hands on my shoulders. **"She Who Skitters in Shadows, I have given you the gift of agency, the last such gift I shall give without at least a token effort in return."**

My dream self mumbles, eyes still fixed on the television. "What?"

**"Did you not wish to be a hero among your people, to strive for greatness unencumbered by your past?"** His voice still holds that quiet edge it held when last he spoke to me, and even bound by the disasters on the television, I have to fight the urge to bow. I have rejected his offer, he has no hold on me.

**"I give you a different mission, She Who Skitters in Darkness. Rise above your peers, and grow powerful, mighty in your glory."**

I want to say no, to do anything, but I can't move to do so.

Then the shadow is gone, leaving only a drop of water from the icy mask, chilling the back of my neck, and I'm lost again to the destruction on the television.

Strangely, when I wake I feel better. Completely restored.

I pull on a pair of white pajama bottoms and a button up top of the same type, and then open the door of the blank room.

It's the Wards' headquarters, just like I remember from last night. "Morning." Kid Win calls. "You all right? Recent triggers can be rough."

"I'm good, thanks." I respond automatically. "Is there?"

"Breakfast? On the table." The Tinker points to a large collapsible table by a cluster of chairs, piled high with half-empty boxes and bags. "Make yourself at home. I'll let Director Piggot know that you're up. She'll probably want you to jump through some hoops before you get to try out, but from what Clockblocker said last night, you seem all right."

He holds out his hand, and I grab it. "Kid Win, and I take it you aren't really Shadow Girl?"

"No, I'm-" I almost say Taylor, but stop. He didn't tell me his real name, he used his cape name. I try to think of something, so I don't end up standing here like a fool. A name rises into my mind, and it spills out of my mouth like I've said it a thousand times, the familiar version of an address that I've heard so often that it's almost natural to introduce myself that way. "Skitter, you can call me Skitter."

"Skitter?" Kid Win mulls the name over. "Sounds like a good name, very dodgy, like you aren't going to get hit by things."

"I'd rather not." I admit, and pick up an apple. "And it just- _feels_ right."

Kid Win rustles through the paper bags until he finds a box of energy bars, and shoves half of them into his pockets. "It happens. A uniform color, a name, a catchphrase, some people like things just because." He shrugs, passes me an energy bar when I reach for the box, and says, "I'll take you down to the interview room when you're ready."

The apple is good, juicy and ripe, but the peanut butter/nut/grain bar is bland and dry. I finish it quickly, and then look for something else, I'm not sure what for. After reassuring myself that whatever it is I'm craving, it isn't here, I grab another piece of fruit, finish it, and follow Kid Win to the elevator.

The ride passes in silence, except for when we reach my stop, and Kid Win points out the door at the end of the hall, and says, "Good luck, Skitter."

White tile flooring and pale blue walls stretch down the hallway, broken only by the wooden doors and their placards. The first four doors are labeled 'interrogation', but the next two are 'interview', and the three at the end of the hall are labeled 'meeting'. That's a good thing, right?

I knock on the door, and a woman's gruff voice calls out. "Come in."

Director Piggot is a short, solidly built woman, and she's sitting on the other end of a circular table from me, hands clasped before her. She looks me over intently, then visibly relaxes. "I'm not going to hurt you, no matter what horror stories Kid Win's filled your head with."

"All right." I pull the chair nearest to the door out, and sit down.

"Clockblocker told me you'd like to join the Wards, is that true?" Piggot asks.

I nod eagerly. "I would, yes."

"There are protocols for situations like this." Piggot explains. "Circumstances like yours do happen occasionally, but I'll need you to answer some questions. Depending on your answers, I may or may not be able to perform certain actions on your behalf, up to and including having a Protectorate member assigned as your legal guardian. First, have you ever been physically abused?"

Falling down the stairs, tripped or pushed a dozen times. Backpack unzipped walking down a crowded hallway, and books and binders removed, later to be found trampled by dirty feet in a corner. Pegged with balls that 'missed' their targets.

"Yes." I say.

Then she asked me, "Was an instance of physical abuse the direct cause of your trigger event?"

I'm back in the locker, the stinking and filthy space, hearing the not-quiet-enough whispers that were obviously meant for my ears. Involved? Yes, but. . . I shook my head.

After a while, I realize that she isn't going to do anything until I've answered her verbally. "It wasn't the direct cause, no. But, it was caused by it, yes."

"In this case," The director explained, "physical abuse would refer to you suffering any kind of bodily harm as the result of another's actions, or not receiving medical attention for previously inflicted harm because of those actions."

"Yes, then." I say, then I elaborate, to make up for my previous silence. "I couldn't get out, but I don't want any trouble about it." Confrontation never works, they always get away.

Director Piggot looks down at her stack of papers, takes the top half off of the stack, and puts it into a manila envelope labeled 'ARMSMASTER'. "That will be your decision, but I'm not the one who'll be working with you on integration back into your previous situation, if you want to pursue that option." She says. "Since the issue of physical abuse has been raised, that passes out of my hands, and into those of a member of the Protectorate, who will work with you to solve any issues you may have with your civilian life in as unobtrusive a manner as is possible."

That's. . . good? I suppose?

Unobtrusive is definitely good.

"And now comes the fun part." Her voice makes it clear that this is not the fun part. "Paperwork. As a minor parahuman in disputed custody, I can't access your legal information, but if you'll fill out this form, and leave the space for your legal information blank, you can at least start to get the process out of the way by signing with your chosen alias for things like your homeschooling authorization."

That throws me for a loop. "Homeschooling? But I thought all the Wards go to Arcadia High?"

Director Piggot recites, dryly. "All Brockton Bay Wards do, but the program institutes a variable length homeschooling section first, so that no one can just look at the new kid to find out who joined the Wards yesterday." She pushes a piece of paper forwards. "Write your alias on the bottom line, then date and sign with the same. To the right."

I pick up a pen, and take the first step towards becoming a real hero.

Skitter _**Skitter**_ 01/16/2011

-SWSiS-

"My hand hurts." I moan in abject despair as I slump into one of the Wards HQ's many chairs, cradling my injured limb. "I can't believe there's so much left!"

"Yeah, there's more after every patrol where we get some action." Clockblocker says, and holds a pamphlet as thick as my finger up to my face. "See?"

"Take it away."

"But the fun part is just about to start." He says. "Come on down to the basement, and we'll do your physical. "I hold up my arms, and Clockblocker pulls me to my feet. "So no more paperwork today, huh?"

"I feel like my cosmic understanding of paperwork just increased." I mutter, but I follow him to the elevator. On the ride down he coughs. "I may have misinformed you last night."

"How?" I ask.

"The PRT spaces I mentioned, they're the backup office, not the main one. My mistake."

I look at him askance. "You forgot who shares the high-tech flying building base with your superhero group."

"Well, when you put it that way. . . yes."

I'm dumbstruck. "How?"

"I've got other things to worry about!" He insists.

"Like what?"

The elevator dings, and the doors open into a vast chamber, easily taking up four entire stories. A grid pattern is visible on the floor nearby, which I think means the structures arrayed in a faux section of downtown street are modular.

"Watching you embarrass yourself." A masked and hooded form stalks out of the wall behind me, and I jump in surprise. Her harsh voice echoes as she shouts to Kid Win, who's standing to the left side of the room, holding a box with a selection of buttons on it. "Start it up on Ambush 3! I'm not waiting for my turn forever, so let her fail and get it over with!"

"I thought you said this was a physical." I say.

Clockblocker nods enthusiastically. "A physical test, yes. Now you see how the blocks are arranged so that there's a street? All you have to do is to get to Mr. Hostage, over there." He points at a crash dummy propped up against a building block.

"It looks like it's been set on fire."

"Set on fire, exploded, shot with bolts of energy, shot with normal bolts, thrown through a wall and into a supervillain, Mr. Hostage has lasted through it all, and is a valuable member of the Protectorate's urban simulation room." Kid Win sighs. "Remember the time I thought I'd vaporized him with an antimatter pistol?"

Clockblocker lets out a laugh. "Or that time we showed up, and saw Vista try to warp it apart?"

The girl walks back up to me. She's Shadow Stalker, I think, but I can't be sure since I haven't read up on her on the Paranet. "Just get from the safe zone, here, to the dummy, and prove you aren't a complete waste of superpower." She growls, then storms into the elevator. "I've changed my mind. Take all the time you need."

The doors close.

"Is she all right?" I ask.

Clockblocker and Kid Win exchange looks. The Tinker speaks. "She's. . . gotten worse, in the past few days, I'll admit. Just give her some space, we've all got issues."

"So I just have to get to the test dummy?" I ask. That doesn't sound too hard.

"There are traps, but it's in safe mode so you don't have to worry too much. We'll tell you if you get tagged, all right?"

"All right." I straighten my pants and shirt, pull back my hair, and step into the simulated street.

Kid Win pushes a button on his remote control, and motions for me to step forward.

The street kind of mimics the streets downtown. Boxy structures painted like buildings line the street, extending up to the roof, and the sidewalks are lined with shop fronts. I move forward cautiously, eyes wide for any sign of an ambush, but nothing happens.

Ten steps, twenty, twenty-five. I'm halfway there, and nothing odd has happened so fa-

"All Wards report to the top floor immediately. All Wards report to the top floor immediately." A loudspeaker announces, before the man speaking over it cuts out. Kid Win sets the remote down, and I rush to join him and Clockblocker in the elevator.

"What's going on?" I ask them. They look so grim, especially Clockblocker.

"It's an all-call." He explains as the numbers on the screen rise higher. "Something's going on, and the PRT wants us all in the same place, so we can mobilize if we have to."

"Do you have spare suits?" The words come out of my mouth before I know what I'm really asking. Am I one of you?

Clockblocker thinks, then nods. "There should be one in the guest room's cabinet."

"Thanks."

"Just don't get me in trouble. If Aegis says you can't come, just pretend you put it on because you don't want people seeing you unmasked." The doors open into the Wards' headquarters just as he finishes speaking, and I bolt for the room I slept in last night.

Idly noting that the bed has been made already, I open the small cabinet, revealing a row of six skintight suits, three male and three female in three sizes each.

I grab the tallest girl's suit and replace the loose pants and shirt I was wearing. Despite Clockblocker's warning, I inspect myself in the mirror before leaving, just to make sure I didn't look ridiculous. Most of the suit is a deep blue, and there are bits of a reddish purple on it too. As a last step, I slide on the mask, replacing my eyes with tinted lenses and covering the last of my skin, and my hair, which makes the back of the mask bulge out slightly as it struggles to contain it.

"Note to self, leave the back of the mask open when I get my own." I shake my head. That's not important right now. Everything accounted for, and taking one last look in the mirror, to make sure the figure in the skintight suit is really me, I exit the guest room.

As I join the assembled circle of capes, Aegis nods at me. "Everyone, time for proper introductions. This is Skitter. Skitter, I'm Aegis, and you've already met Clockblocker, Kid Win, Vista, and Shadow Stalker. This is Gallant." Everyone says hello, except for Shadow Stalker, who mutters something.

The team's leader claps his hands. "I realize this might be a little odd, but bear with me, this has been verified." The red-clad teen continues, if a bit less authoritatively. "We've received reports that Squealer knows we took Skidmark in last night, and she's trying to break him out of jail herself, rather than contact a jailbreak specialist. Uber and Leet have taken offence to her mode of escape."

A screen fizzles to light behind him, showing a scene in downtown Brockton Bay that makes me try to rub my eyes, to make sure I'm actually awake. A twenty foot tall bipedal collection of paint, rust, and advertisements for illegal drugs runs down the street towards the cameraman as Skidmark clings to its top by his fingertips. Another robot, this one also rusted, but better put together and with two small tesla coils coming off of its shoulders, is in hot pursuit, firing lasers from its eyes as it runs.

The camera feed goes to static as the second robot steps on it.

"Transformers?" Gallant is the first to break the stunned silence.

Clockblocker corrects him. "No way, Leet would have put it in vehicle mode for a chase like that, and besides, he's already made one of those, remember?"

Leet's the skinny guy, a Tinker, I remember. Like Kid Win, he makes gadgets, but his quirk is that he can only make a given type of invention once. Further gadgets along the same lines of an already used idea tend to explode, rather than work.

Uber is built almost the opposite of Leet, his partner. He's tall, but big too, and he can do anything. Any skill, any learned ability, he can master it with just a few hours of effort. My dad told me that, according to rumor, before he and Leet formed their partnership he went on a tour of community colleges and local dojos.

Thank god he doesn't strike out on his own, because he'd be a menace without Leet holding him down.

That said, I don't remember much about Squealer.

"Who's the woman?" I ask. Heads turn to face me, and a fidget in the massed attention of the teen heroes.

Aegis shrugs, and the spell is broken. "I forgot you haven't seen the files we have. Squealer's Skidmark's girlfriend, and the one piloting the first robot. She builds vehicles, mostly, and she's no good at things that are subtle."

"That's it?" I ask, aghast. "That's her only limitation?"

"She's also a terrible Tinker." Kid Win reassures me. "But if it makes you feel better, you can stay and watch on the monitors."

Should I go?

I'm not trained, I just got my powers a few days ago. As I think about it, going into cape fight without practicing using my power beforehand sounds like the stupidest thing I could possibly do, almost like I'd be asking to get stepped on by one of the robots, or exploded when one of Leet's inventions is that bit too similar to a previous one.

"I'd rather stay, if it's all the same." I admit, but Aegis doesn't seem angry, in fact, he's nodding approval. "Good, you know your limits."

"I think it's more that I don't, actually." I crack a smile through the mask, then realize that nobody can see my lips through the thick fabric.

Vista follows up on Aegis' comment while she replays the video footage. "Good thing, too. Uber and Leet are usually pretty safe to fight, they don't do any really serious crimes, but we don't know Squealer's limits yet, and Leet looks _pissed_." She freezes the picture, then zooms in on a man in the background wearing weathered looking metal armor, pointing and shouting at the first robot.

"Supervillains have a tendency to have pet issues, and pushing one of them on it is never a good idea." Gallant explains.

"He's weak." Shadow Stalker says flatly. "That's all you need to know." She stands up, looks pointedly at Aegis, and stalks to the elevator. "I'll get the helicopter ready."

No one speaks until the door closes behind her.

"So." I begin, but Vista interrupts.

"I'm sure she didn't mean to dismiss the advice of the people on the team who have waaay~ more experience fighting other capes straight up." She chirps. "But not everyone can be a stone cold hardass like Shadow Stalker."

Kid Win bursts out in a torrent of laughter that gradually tapers off under Aegis' disapproving stare.

"Are you finished?"

Kid Win nods, and smothers a chortle.

"Thank you." The team leader takes a deep breath and addresses the massed Brockton Bay Wards (less one) again. "Squealer's causing a lot of property damage, so we're going to hit fast and hard. No fancy tactics, we're taking everybody down as soon as possible, and we're not going to let them react. Vista, you're the cornerstone. Once we land, you need to get the distance between us and them as short as you can, then increase the area around the fight to reduce collateral damage."

The preteen hero nods, and straightens the hang of her breastplate. My own chest feels awkward in the skintight suit, but at least it's got some sort of armor plating I didn't notice before I put it on covering the important bits. I make a vow that my own costume isn't going to be as embarrassing to wear in public.

"Kid Win, you're going to get Clockblocker as close to Squealer's robot as you can, and then he'll freeze it before it can use whatever surprises it has loaded in that shell." Aegis's voice is stern and authoritative. He's clearly used to being in control of the Wards' colorful personalities. "Gallant, see if you can get Leet with your blasts, get him in a less angry mood. Everybody without an active target helps the rest of us. And Shadow Stalker can take Skidmark, maybe she'll be less moody about being in the Wards with a good win under her belt. Got it?"

Everyone nods, and I do to on reflex.

"Then let's do this!" Aegis shouts.

The Wards stream towards the elevator, some stopping to grab gear and utility belts before moving on, leaving me alone in the control room.

"I suppose I can use the cameras to watch." I say to myself, and begin the complicated task of trying to figure out which of the hundred buttons on the remote changes the camera feeds.

"You know," Aegis says from behind me, and I jump. "Nobody said you can't watch from the chopper." He holds out his hand, and helps me to my feet. "Coming with?"

My heart pounds in my throat, and I say, "Yes, yes I am."

-SWSiS-

The helicopter lands on the top of a parking deck, the midst of the downtown sprawl that covers the core of Brockton Bay. As the engine powers down, audible crunches of metal begin to echo through the concrete structure.

"All right then." Aegis calls over the dimming roar of the rotors. "We do this the right way! I don't want any more holes in my uniform, the director's told me we've nearly gutted the budget this month, and I want to splurge on Fugly Bobs so let's not waste what we can spend on cheap food."

I'm not sure if I should say anything, and judging by the way no one else responds, they're not sure either.

"Fine. I'll just go to Fugly's myself." Aegis says, and jumps off the roof screaming, "Let's do this!"

Clockblocker and Kid Win flit into the air after him on a red-glowing hoverboard, and Aegis rises up from his fall to meet them in flight. I look to see what everyone else is doing, and blink.

"Where's Shadow Stalker?" I ask Vista, who points down.

"Her shadow state can phase." She explains, then looks toward the flying Wards and furrows her brow in concentration, her forehead wrinkling behind her half-mask. The buildings they're next to seem to curve inwards, contracting while still remaining the same shape, and they reach the intersection just as a pair of fistfighting robots spill into it.

Gallant takes aim from the rooftop and launches a barrage of bright red bolts of light that saturate Uber and Leet's robot, timing his attack to coincide with Clockblocker leaping off of Kid Win's hoverboard to land on the junkheap bot's shoulder.

His hand tags Skidmark, and the crackheaded villain freezes in place, and like a roadblock, when the second robot slams into it, unable to halt its momentum in time, it flips backwards, hitting the ground hard and dislodging its pilot.

But the barrage of red energy bolts is still hitting the robot, which is now slowly righting itself. "He fell out." I say to myself, but Gallant must have a sensory enhancer built into his helmet, because he stops shifts his aim.

"Skitter, right?" He glances back at me.

"Yes."

"Good one, tell me when he's down. I can't aim well from this far out."

I step up to the ledge with him so I can get a better view of the situation. I see the steel-clad form take a hit to the leg, but he keeps moving. "His armor is protecting him, I think, but he isn't wearing a helmet." I say, and raise a hand to shield my eyes from the sun and the gleaming light coming from Gallant's raised fists. "He's dodging behind the- you go him!" I punch the air as Leet goes limp and slumps to the pavement.

"Can you see Uber?" Gallant asks, "Thanks, by the way. I really need to get some magnification built into this thing, but Armsmaster's always busy."

In the intersection down the street, I spy a woman crouching low and moving away from the toppled robots. "Squealer's making a break for it!" I shout, and point. "He's by the- never mind. Someone shot him with an arrow."

"Nonlethal?"

I squint to make out the detail. "He isn't bleeding."

"Good enough." The Ward shrugs, and steps back from the ledge. "Vista, you can stop now."

Then everything happens all at once.

Gallant turns around, and his alarmed voice makes me jump back in alarm myself. "Vista!"

I turn, alerted by Gallant's scream to the danger behind me, but too late! A bolt of red energy blows a hole through my chest from behind and spewing disintegration smoke through the air! My foot slips as I land, and I topple to the ground just in time to see Gallant duck under Uber's punch and launch a double beam into his gut.

Uber freezes, and I take the chance to look for Vista. I find her, laid carefully on her side, a small burn mark on her costume's back from where the laser hit. A stun beam? But why would it blow a whole in-

I'm not hurt.

The shadow! I must have instinctively used the power that let me turn into a smoky form, and slipped _through_ the space the laser had already passed!

Heartened by my realization, I climb back to my feet just in time to have Gallant's thrown form catch me in the face and send me back to the pavement.

We untangle our limbs as quickly as we can from the awkward mess, and I'm flushing beneath my mask despite the situation.

"Bad emotion." Gallant grunts. "Let's try that _again!"_ He doubles his hands together and points them at Uber, who relaxes his ready stance just before the blast hits him, splashing red light across his impressive leather duster.

It would have been an impressive piece of clothing on a man of shorter stature, to be truthful. That Uber was over six feet of roughly bear-shaped human just made it all the more impressive as it billowed back in the face of the energy discharge.

When he opens his eyes, the supervillain's face is completely blank. His smooth baritone echoes with a kind of centered surety when he says, "Emotions have no hold on the prepared mind, but flow from it like water off a stone." Then he raises the blocky laser pistol again, and shoots Gallant in the chest.

Instead of ricocheting off of his armor, it absorbs into it, singing it as it passes. Second thoughts flash through my head. Is that because of its stun effect, or because Leet's finally made something spectacular, like a laser that ignores body armor? Is Vista dead, and I just don't know it yet?

No.

She's alive, and so it Gallant. They've got to be.

Uber lowers the gun, looks at me, and frowns, though it's hard to make out around his bandana. "Give up, and I won't shoot you." He says, finally.

A feeling washes over me, my thoughts doubled, as if narrated by two voices at once.

Give up?

Give up and take what life is willing to give me?

Give up, and let someone else keep me down, stop me from becoming what I know I can be?

I come back to my sense, and my head is bowed, my arms loose at my side. "No." I hiss, and the familiar sensation of blood dripping off of my forehead joins the searing, numbing rage inside me as I roll my shoulders back loosely, feeling the icy chill of my power settle into my nerves.

"I think I'll take you down instead!" My legs tense. Uber starts to bring up his laser, but he's too slow! I'm in the air, leaping towards Uber with my fist held back as the darkness within me erupts out into a corona of power. I drive my fist into his face in a punch that meets his upraised arm like a hammer blow, and the fight begins!

Uber's arm slides sideways, carrying my fist with it. He half turns and tries to sweep my legs, but the prickles of fire tracing through my body twinge and I step over his foot, making another punch, but he deflects it again.

A third punch hits the villain square in the armored gut, but he ignores it and his arm snakes back along its previous path in a vicious backhand that I dissolve away from, reforming from tattered smoke and black fire to his left.

He fires at me with his laser, point blank, and again I become smoke on the air, reappear in a burst of immaterial fire, and attack with a quick flurry of blows that bounce off of his armored back like raindrops off of a roof.

Again he rounds on me, though, and drives an elbow towards my gut, and again I trigger that spark in my mind, and I'm somewhere else.

This isn't good, but it could be worse. My aura of black flames has solidified into a roiling mass of darkness around me, but it must not be obscuring too much because Uber could probably still beat me black and blue with no hands, if this were a contest of skill.

Then he holds up his left hand, and a short arrow, a bolt, appears grasped in it as if by magic. Uber clenches is fist, and it snaps like a piece of straw.

I realize with a sinking feeling in my gut that Leet's partner in crime is just too good at fighting, I haven't even managed to make him flinch yet, and I resolve to ask someone for lessons on how to fight, if it weren't for my Breaker ability to just not get hit, I'd be laid out cold with Gallant and Vista. Maybe I should ask Aegis, he's a brawle-

Uber's hands blur as he shifts styles, and in the space of a second the space I used to be is struck half a dozen times.

He's standing differently; leaning farther forward than he has since the fight began! I recall something from a hazy self-defense class about needing to keep your balance, and I realize that I can win this!

I crouch down, a smoky outline following my movements, and I recognize a single spark of power flick just behind my forehead as I suddenly shift to the right, avoiding Uber's steel boot as it hits the space that my foot had just been occupying.

An idea slots into place, and I try to recreate another way I remember the ice cold power moving through me. It rushes into my arms as easily as breathing, though not quite as much power as when I'd shoved the table, and I grab Uber's leg and heave _up_!

Uber obliges.

He slams his knee into my nose, and my head snaps back with a sickening crunch of shattered cartilage. I scream in pain and try to turn away, but a pair of hands hold my shoulders, and he hauls me up. Face to face with him again, I immediately notice that Uber is still calm and controlled, though a frown mars his otherwise stoic face.

There's a growl behind me, like a claw strider but more throaty- a car's engine screaming to full throttle not ten feet away! Uber releases me and shouts, "Dodge!" My opponent throws himself to the side, and I spin around just in time to recognize my own reflection on the windshield of a rapidly approaching minivan.

I reach for my power again, but my eyes widen in shock. "I'm out." I whisper with dawning horror, and I frantically leap out of the way!

Too little, too late.

The white minivan hits me almost dead on, catching me in midair. As I grab at the hood to keep from getting dragged under, the minivan begins to decelerate. Behind the wheel Shadow Stalker's wide eyes meet my own. We share a moment, and I feel like I've seen the person behind her blankfaced mask before.

Then the van hits the concrete wall, drives me nearly a foot into the hood, and keeps going until he hits the ground below, front end first.

My vision turns white, then red.

When I come to my senses, it's to the crackling sound of fire, real fire, not my inner power. "Ouch." I say, but I can't shout, the minivan is still perched above me, stained orange by the flames bathing the ground around it.

I try to flood my arms with power, to pry myself free, but the metal frame of the minivan has crumpled around me three times now, and I'm well and truly stuck.

"Dammit!" Shadow Stalker hisses, and strains to shove the van over. I guess I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because I hadn't seen her until she spoke, not like the fire, or the cheery little pumping stations all around us. She slumps over, and looks at the fire, which is getting awfully friendly with the gas pump.

Something tells me that isn't a good thing.

"I feel. . . A little squished." I wheeze, and the caped cape gives me a dirty glare.

She growls at me as she throws herself at the van again, rocking it back enough for me to tenderly roll a little ways out of it before it falls back onto me, and everything goes white for a moment before she rocks it again, and I get another few inches free, then me right arm. "Just turn to smoke before the fire reaches the-"

And then the world is made of fire and pressure, followed by merciful darkness.

-Interlude Two-

"Panacea here." Her white robe blends in with the snow covered street in the boat graveyards that take up the city's northern coastline, the vivid red crosses on her front and back the only splash of color visible on the street.

The voice in the earbud she had hooked to her cell phone was familiar, but Aegis' panic is clear to the teenaged heroine. "We need help. We brought a potential

h us to take Uber and Leet and Skidmark. She said she'd stay with the helicopter but Uber snuck up on the rear team!"

Panacea presses the button on her belt that signals for her sister to come pick her up. "Where are you?"

"Thirteenth and, uh, Pom?" His voice goes out of focus, he's talking to someone else. "Pom. Thirteenth and Pom streets, four blocks west of PRT headquarters. Got it?"

As Glory Girl lands next to her, Panacea rattles the directions back. Her sister nods, grabs her in a bear hug under the shoulders, and lifts off into the air, flying as fast as she could.

"What first aid have you applied?" The question is reflexive, something she's said a thousand times. "What can you tell me about the damage?" Questions to keep the caller calm, mostly. There wasn't anything they'd say that her powers wouldn't tell her more about the second she touched the victim.

Aegis audibly sucks in a breath, then lets it out slowly. "Clockblocker got to her in seconds, but it's still bad. Shadow Stalker missed Uber, and hit Skitter instead."

Skitter? An odd name, but maybe the powers justified it. Panacea shrugs and leans back into her adoptive sister's arms. "Smoke and ruins near the address, I'll take us there!" Glory Girl calls out as they begin to descend towards a smudge of smoke in the distance. "With a crossbow bolt? I don't heal brain injuries." She reminds the Ward.

". . . With a car."

Panacea blinks, nonplussed, but she can't stop a slight smile from curving up behind the scarf that covers her lower face beneath the hood of her robe. "I can do that."

"The car exploded, and then the gas station exploded too."

Again the blink of mute astonishment. "Can you say that again?"

There's a rustle of movement and air hitting the microphone, then Clockblocker is speaking. "Injured. Already had to refreeze twice. Please stop making him talk, it's a little distracting." Then he hangs up.

When she arrives, a minute and a half later, the scene is eerily reminiscent of the bomb sites she's visited. Thanking her sister with a smile that she'd see through the scarf, Panacea takes it all in as she walks to the grey and white armor clad boy hunched over someone else, at the epicenter of the blast.

He steps back when he sees her approach, but leaves his hand on her patient's until her own makes contact.

Her eyes close, and she waits for Clockblocker's power to expire with a practiced ease. After a minute she figured that this was one of the longer times his power had been active, and made a visual examination of the cape.

Teenaged, which made sense if subject is a Wards candidate, but without many of the physical immaturities of a younger teen. Likely a high school student, which is supported by subject's above average height. The blue super suit is a Wards standard backup, with a hidden carapace that slots together in the torso when put under sudden pressure. Not Tinker work, just advanced tech and good designs. She makes a note to mention it to the Dallons later.

The suit is ripped and torn almost completely off on the right arm, and the torso has suffered scrapes and tears as well, but the skin beneath is remarkably intact. The real problem with an explosion though, Panacea knew very well, was the shockwave. A wave of pressure like the one from a gas station's underground tank exploding, like what had happened here? It might have just liquefied the cape's insides, no matter how strong her skin is.

Just then Clockblocker's power stops affecting the subject, and Panacea's takes effect. Information on what bones have broken and shattered fills her mind with a long list of deep tissue bruises and ruptured organs. Massive blunt trauma was the damage in question, which wasn't terrible. The tissues are dense, far denser than a normal human's, which mitigated the damage a great deal, preventing dismemberment, and the face had been facing away from the blast, so the eyes were spared.

She glosses over the brain. Mild damage, but she's seen worse heal. Maybe, just once, she should-

No.

No brains.

That was her rule, and she couldn't cross it.

But she fixes the major organ damage, and repairs the ruptured blood vessels before she takes some time to decide on what needs to be repaired next.

Panacea opens her eyes again. "She's out of immediate danger, but there are a few nonstandard details, so I'll need a moment to just think about this."

"What?" Clockblocker asks, hand hovering by Skitter's again, ready to freeze her at the medical specialists' command.

"She's alive, fine, really, but I can't feel a heartbeat." She frowns, and mutters under her breath. "No, that's not right, I can _feel it_, but I can't feel it." Panacea touches the center of her patient's torso to get a better sense. "I can't feel her heartbeat on my hand, but my power tells me that everything is fine."

"I suppose that's good," Aegis says, "but, what the hell is going on, then?"

Panacea thinks. "How many powers has she displayed?"

"You think she's a Trump." Clockblocker realizes. "Changer, Brute, and either Breaker or Shaker, at least. You think her power's an adaptive one? That would make sense, I found her in the snow yesterday, so a survival type power might be- she's moving!"

"Give her space." Panacea snaps, and reaches down to cradle the cape's head in her hands, supporting the one thing she couldn't heal on the injured Ward. "Don't struggle, you're with friends. Just open your eyes if you can."

Pale white eyelids open wide in an instant, displaying glowing red eyes as all of the downed cape's muscles tense at once, and she grabs Panacea's arm, wrapping it in her own and cradling it close.

"You're all right. We're friends." She keeps her voice low, as the cape- Skitter, she remembers- nuzzles the sleeve of her robe up. Odd, but not too odd. For capes, at least. If Panacea had to remember the long list of quirks she'd seen, she couldn't. Some capes didn't like physical contact, but this one obviously did.

Then all other thought is driven from Panacea's head, because Skitter sinks a pair of fangs into her arm, and begins to drink.


	2. Corpse and Scepter

I switch to first person past sometime in this chapter, mostly because I'm sick of the present tense.

-SWSiS-

"What's going on?"

"Panacea, is she awake?"

Two voices reach past the blinding light that's lancing through my head like a soulsteel needle in the temple. No, two of them, one in each. I smell animal fat, and blood baked into skin over years and years, and a thousand other tiny scents of oil and machinery.

I hum as another wave of warmth washes through me, and reflexively exhale another cloud of power, drawing another, larger, cloud from the warmth I'm pressed against before it too flows in. I try to do it again, let the cool breath bring me more warmth, but it doesn't work.

"Sister?"

"Skitter, what are you doing?"

I ignore the voices, just like I ignore the other one, the one that's whispering secrets in my inner ears, telling me about. . . things. Things that make my ears hurt and my brain numb. It says one last thing about fires and houses, and then I tune it out completely. But the two voices outside aren't stopping, like the inside voice stopped. In fact they're louder now than they were previously.

"Is that **blood**?"

An oppressive weight pushes down on me, weighing heavily on my shoulders.

"Skitter, I think you need to get up now."

"Fine." I mutter, and straighten my limbs one at a time, eyes still clamped tightly shut against the beating Sun. Arms go first, then I put my hands on the ground behind me to lift my body enough to fully extend my legs. "That's better."

I roll my neck to work out a kink, and finally open my eyes.

Glory Girl is standing right in front of me, her white minidress billowing around her in the slight breeze, blue eyes narrowed at. . . me?

Beside her, Clockblocker has a hand on her arm, holding her away. "You've got a little something." He says, and taps his visor with his free hand.

I scrape my arm across my face, and notice that the blue fabric is stained darker. Am I bleeding? I feel my face more thoroughly. No bleeding, but where did the blood come from?

And why hadn't I noticed it before he pointed it out?

"Would you mind helping me up? My leg's asleep." A girl's voice asks from behind me. I turn around to help her, but there's a blur of white cloth and yellow hair, and Glory Girl helps her sister to her feet with the too-careful movements of a powerful Brute dealing with something precious.

"Stay away from her." She hisses at me, and the pressure intensifies. Oddly, I'm not feeling any of the awe and terror described on the paranet, just a detached impression that I should be frightened of her.

Blood is dripping slowly down Panacea's arm from a pair of tiny puncture marks near her elbow, making a pattern the same color as the icon on her chest.

_Oh._ My jaw aches with the reminder that I'd just latched my mouth around someone else's arm and _sucked her blood _to heal myself. At least I'm pretty sure I didn't take too much, because my stomach doesn't feel full, so as long as I wasn't hurting her when I did it, it's almost like I just grabbed her hand too tightly and cut her with my nails. Actually, I didn't have as large a breakfast as I'm used to, and my stomach growls at me when I think about it, but I put that aside to check on the girl that had just healed me. "Is she all right?" I ask.

Panacea nods. "Fine, yes! I'm fine, really fine." She steps out from Glory Girl's supporting arm. "But I really should be going back to the hospital."

Glory Girl looks at me, and the raw anger in her gaze burns off the last of the fuzzy good feelings, leaving me filled with cold again. "What's your problem?" I ask.

"My problem?" She parrots at me, and takes a step forward, finger outstretched to point at her sister. "My problem is that you took a bite out of my sister!"

Clockblocker slides between her and me, arms raised. "Calm down."

"I wasn't fully awake." I protest, but I can't help but feel a stab of guilt at causing a selfless hero like Pancea harm, even without meaning to, and try to make apologies. "I'm sorry for doing it, though."

Glory Girl suddenly stops her advance, and backpedals briefly before glaring impotently at the visored hero as he raises his hand in front of himself. He says, "Nobody got hurt. This isn't some old comic where the heroes have to fight because of some little misunderstanding."

"She took a bite-"

"Pinpricks." Clockblocker declares. "Panacea would have stopped her if it were serious, wouldn't you?"

Panacea tilts her head while she looks at me. "You healed better after you bit me. That's a good enough reason, I suppose." She shifts her attention to her sister, then looks at Clockblocker. "Which of those is accurate?"

He points to one of the semitransparent clocks drifting around his grey costume, and Panacea blinks. "That long? Sister, I'm afraid I need a ride to the hospital, can you give me a lift so I won't be late?"

Glory Girl's expression softens, and she grabs her sister under the arms, braces and flies off. I can't help but notice that she shoots me one last dirty look before she leaves, though.

Clockblocker leans his head back to the sky and lets out a sigh audible through his visor as soon as they disappear over the urban skyline. "That could have turned nasty. Are you all right?"

"Yes. I feel fine." I say, and look down at my costume. There are tears everywhere, but nothing important is showing. "I need a cape."

"Something to talk about with your PR agent." Clockblocker says, and claps me on my back. "Good to see you not liquefied by a blast wave, we were all very worried about you for a while there. Now come on, there've been a few calls the other Wards had to take in the past few minutes, and we're handling a. . ." He pulls a phone out of an unclipped belt pouch, and checks. "We're helping to stop gawkers from getting into a high school. Something about some guys corpse and a missing person case. Want to come with?"

I remember that the Wards go to Arcadia High School, a much newer, better funded one in the southern part of the city. "In Arcadia High? I never would have thought that would happen there. Don't you have security cameras and robot guards, or something?"

"I wish." Clockblocker says. "But it's not the one you'll be going to, it's the other one, on the north end. I take it you're the type to recover after a nearly fatal injury?"

"I don't think I can take any more excitement." I admit.

Clockblocker waves it off. Give it time. You'll get four hours of sleep a night like the rest of us soon enough. I'll call you a heli to take you back to headquarters."

The helicopter lands on the roof of the parking garage, on the other end from one we'd come in on. As Clockblocker helps me strap in, he says. "You aren't going to freak out as soon as I leave, are you?"

"No. I'm fine." I'm looking down at the gas station, the husk of the minivan, and the way the pavement is torn up and everything nearby is shredded and scorched. "It's just. . . Things have changed so fast. I'm not sure they've caught up to me yet."

"They probably haven't." He says. "But you won't be alone with they do, and that's the important thing, right?"

"Right." I smile back, because that's what you're supposed to do when someone reassures you, and Clockblocker gives the signal to take off to the pilot. Then the shite PRT helicopter takes off, and carries me out over the bay, to where the Wards headquarters is located. The bright morning light catches on the ferry, and I'm struck with a sudden thought.

"A missing person?"

But I'm not given any more time to think about it, because a man in bulky powered armor is standing by the landing zone, carrying a manila folder. Armsmaster, one of the most senior capes in Brockton bay, and a Tinker specializing in inventions with multiple uses, cuts an imposing figure.

He's tall, broad shouldered, and carries a high-tech halberd with him everywhere he goes. While most Tinkers prefer to hang back and fight from range with their gadgets, Arsmsmaster, as his name suggests, prefers to handle things personally.

I exit the helicopter and step out of the way, expecting him to take my seat for a trip back to the city, but he only fixes me with the blue visor on his helmet, then turns, and gestures for me to follow him.

He leads me past the entry doors and into the lone elevator. Once the doors to that close behind us, he presses a button. The same floor that Director Piggot had interviewed me in.

The Protectorate is the most massive superhero organization in the world, spanning North America in its entirety. When you buy a Protectorate poster, Armsmaster is there, not in the middle, but he stands shoulder to shoulder with heroes like Alexandria, his dark blue armor managing somehow to be both regal and intimidating at the same time. Now that I'm seeing him in person, I can tell that it's in how he stands. This is a man who knows for a fact everything that he is capable of.

He's smart, yes, that goes hand in hand with being a Tinker on his level, but he's canny too. I'm sure that taking me to this room, past all the doors marked 'interogation', isn't a coincidence. He walks down the hall and to the door on the end, and opens it smoothly, confidently, and motions for me to sit.

There's only one chair.

"Your name is not available on the summary and evaluation I've been given. Can you tell me why?" He asks me.

"The director said something about not needing that."

"If you want to claim you come from an abusive home, then yes." Armsmaster doesn't sit, instead simply standing at the other end of the table, facing me. "The PRT and the organizations it supervises are not allowed to return a minor to a situation where they have been physically abused, and must notify relevant authorities if possible. We also," he stresses, "prefer to persuade teenaged rogues to join the Wards program, so they don't get killed or injured trying to do the right thing."

I fidget in my seat.

"But Uber and Leet changed the way they work, so I suppose I can't blame Aegis too much. They've never split up before, and I hope you'll accept my apology for Shadow Stalker's actions as well, she's. . . enthusiastic."

"She was just as surprised that my power didn't work as I was." I say. "I've got an inner reserve that I can spend to do things, and I didn't realize that I didn't have enough left, so. . ."

"So you tried to use your power instead of dodging _and_ using your power." Armsmaster concludes. His helmet covers his face from his nose up, so I can see that he's serious when he says, "What have you learned today?"

_That being a superhero hurts when you mess up, and that Uber doesn't want anyone he fights to end up seriously injured or dead_, I think, but no. A man like Armsmaster doesn't just ask questions like that for a witty answer, so I think for a moment, then say, "Not to rely on my powers."

"Very good." He nods, and smiles a little from within his neatly trimmed beard. "Powers can fail you at the worst of times, or go out of control, but personal skill will stay with you until your body gives out." Armsmaster sets his halberd down on the table, finally relinquishing his weapon, but an instinct I didn't know I have almost screams that he's still just as dangerous. "Before we go any further, do you need to clean up, get a snack?"

"I ah, already ate." My jaws ache again, and I flush at the memory of the sweet sticky liquid on my tongue. "And I'm fine. It's just been a busy day."

"It has, hasn't it?" he says under his breathe, then claps his hands together. "So. Before I have you fill out these forms, you should know that I have been assigned as your Protectorate sponsor. Your performance will reflect on me, and mine on you."

Armsmaster's performance is reflecting on me? Me? That's a heady thought.

He must be able to see through tinted lenses, because the veteran cape reacts as if I wasn't wearing a full face mask. "No pressure, right?"

"No pressure." I gulp, and a thought strikes me. I can feel my face pale as the blood rushes from it. "When can I call home? My dad- It's been a week since I talked to him!"

The blue clad cape pulls a cell phone out of a slot on his armor, and hands it to me. "Here. It's normally for leaving with witnesses, but I understand that family can be important."

I give him a rushed, "Thank you", and then I punch in the familiar number of my home's phone. It rings five times, then there's a click.

"Hey, this is Danny!" My father says, and I open my mouth to tell him I'm fine, that I'm not hurt, or running away, but the recording continues. "I'm not here at the moment, but if you leave me a message after the tone, I'll call you back when I get home."

**Beep.**

"Hey dad, it's me." My throat is dry, and the words have to be forced out. There's something different about talking into a recording device that makes me lose my train of thought, and mess up. "I'm all right, and I didn't mean to- I mean I just had some trouble at school, and I'm fine now. The Wards picked me up before the snow got to me, and I've just. I'm OK. If you call back then Armsmaster can, no?"

The Tinker shakes his head, then points to me. "He's letting me borrow this phone for a while, so you can call me and we can talk as soon as you get off-"

"End of memory. Please press one for more options." The answering machine says mechanically, and I hang up."

"You're crying. Tissue?" Armsmaster holds out a paper tissue. I take it and wipe my eyes.

"I'm all right, really." I tell him, and he nods.

"I'm sure you are. Now tell me," Armsmaster puts his hands on the table's edge, and leans over. "That isn't the message you leave at an abusive household, so that happened somewhere else."

I stop moving, even my breathing. "I'd rather not talk about this."

"You said that physical abuse was indirectly related to your gaining your powers, your trigger event. Further, Panacea called in a report where she theorized that your powers have a 'survival' focus, indicating the abuse was of a level where you feared for your life."

"I-" My words are ignored, and Armsmaster asks his question.

"Where did the abuse occur?"

"I don't want to cause trouble." I say. "Can't it just be done with?"

Armsmaster stands back up to his full height, and I can see myself in his reflective visor. "Trouble has been caused. All the remains, Skitter, is justice. That is what being a hero means, punishing the guilty for their crimes against the innocent."

I can't respond to that. "I thought heroes protected the innocent."

"In an ideal world, yes." Armsmaster nods. "It would be wonderful to do that, but this is not an ideal world, and until it is, until the gangs are off the streets, the Endbringers are destroyed, and corruptions is purged, there will be justice for suffering."

His voice rings in the nearly empty room, though he hasn't raised it above his previously conversational tone. "Now tell me what happened, and I'll do what I can."

He's a hero, and he wants to help. I can understand what he's saying. Revenge is wrong, but so is what happened to me. I nearly died because the bullies went too far. Can I really build a life as a hero, if I let them get away without learning their lesson? Shouldn't someone teach them that what they did is wrong?

"Will you let whoever it is do this to someone else?" Armsmaster asks me, and I know what I have to do.

"I thought it was getting better this fall. . ."

-SWSiS-

Telling Armsmaster what's been happening at school is the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm tempted to leave things out, to gloss over the worst of it as I do with my dad, but I keep going until the very end.

Through the daily torments, the 'accidental' hits and scrapes, the childish pranks that ruined homework and projects, the whisper campaigns that followed me as I moved around the building, the locker.

Through all of it, Armsmaster keeps his gaze on my face, as if he could somehow keep me talking just by sheer force of will. Maybe he did, because I find myself telling him about how things had gotten better after Emma started to become friends with me, winter break, and the hand on my back that shoved me into the decomposing filth that was piled high in my locker.

"And then there's darkness." I finish. "A voice, or a vision, and the next thing I know I'm wandering out of the ship graveyard, and I can't feel the cold."

"Could you please repeat the names, Skitter?" His voice has the same intensity that persuaded me to tell him about the bullying, and I respond automatically, unable or unwilling to resist in my mentally exhausted state.

"Emma Barnes, Madison Clements, and Sophia Hess."

Armsmaster nods, slowly. "Yes, that's what I thought I heard. Rest assured, the problem will be taken care of, and you will not have to deal with them again."

"I won't?"

Armsmaster straightens up. "A court case would be public, drawn out, and would destroy whatever degree of a secret identity you want to maintain. You don't exactly match your yearbook picture." He flashes a wry smile at you, then keeps talking.

"Madison Clements and Emma Barnes will be barred from attending Arcadia High in the fall semester, due to academic misconduct. A friend of mine has discovered several discrepancies in their calculus scores that will warrant an investigation."

I notice that he only mentioned two of the three, but he continues after a momentary pause. "Sophia Hess' situation is out of my hands."

My gut begins to twist itself into knots as I imagine what Sophia's reaction would be to her two chief helpers being surrounded by scandal. "What do you mean, out of your hands?"

"Exactly that." He grunts. "The director has issued standing orders about the kind of situation she's in, and the PRT has the legal right to enforce that order."

"Oh." I say, and stop. So it's just someone else, higher up the ladder, taking control. That's all right. "You said something about maybe not wanting a secret identity?"

"You'll have to have one, at least to go to school with, but it doesn't have to be your legal name." He explains. "But I've seen Wards who preferred not to be their normal selves. Being a cape can act as a stress relief mechanism during the teenage years, but most Wards I've met used their out of costume selves as the recreational aspect."

"What about you?" I ask. "How do you handle two lives?"

Armsmaster's mouth quirks up into the smile I've seen on dozens of posters and interviews, and he says, "Friends. Nothing makes friends like cape fights."

I think I like the sound of that.

"Of course there's no need to make decision about that now. Most Wards graduates recommend just 'letting whatever happens, happen'." Armsmaster opens the manila folder, reaches inside, and pulls out a small stack of papers, and a pen. He slides the papers along the table to rest in front of me. "Legally, you aren't allowed to sign any of these without your guardian present, so just read through them tonight, and I'll send a copy to your father as well. The ABB have gone silent, and E88 is still recovering from last week's crackdown, so I should be able to divert a patrol to drop by the docks, and make sure he checks his answering machine when he gets home."

"That would be great." I say, and manage a smile.

Armsmaster smiles back. "Just call it a signing bonus. It's always good to have someone on the team." He holds out his hand, and I shake it. "Welcome to the Wards, Skitter."

-SWSiS-

"All I have to say is that people like that really get on my nerves." Shadow Stalker says as the elevator opens, and the Wards stream into their headquarters.

I set the notepad I was writing in down on the table, and close it out of habit as the black-clad Ward approaches, but she slips past me without acknowledging my presence at all. Once again, I can't help but feel something familiar about her, this time her attitude. I turn to follow her as she moves into a room. She has the same attitude that the girls who bullied me had, sure that she's above everyone else, willing to exercise that surety with vicious enthusiasm, and a bully to her rotten core.

Which isn't normally the way I'd think things, but there's something about Shadow Stalker that just puts me on edge.

"I know that look." Aegis sits down in a chair on the other side of the table, and turns on the monitor bank.

I blink, startled out of my thoughts. "What look?"

He shrugs. "The one with the drama."

"This is a drama free zone!" Clockblocker shouts from the small kitchen installed into the far corner.

Next to him, Kid Win opens the microwave and starts a bag of popcorn. "Besides, it's your first day on a _superhero team_, and unless I'm remembering things wrong, there shouldn't be a mopey bone in your body."

I have the feeling that Aegis is rolling his eyes behind his mask as he turns the screens to play local news. "He really means it." He mock whispers. "He's keen on the whole 'relaxing' thing, as long as nothing else is going on."

"I heard that!"

"Sure, sure." Aegis says. "Anybody seen Gallant and Vista? Shadow Stalker opted out, but they're going to miss the news if they don't hurry up."

As the team leader fiddles with the volume, Clockblocker sits down on the seat to my left. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You handled yourself pretty well for a rookie." He drawls dryly. "It's almost like you're some kind of spy, sent here to infiltrate our ranks and report back to your undead master."

"I, what?" That came completely out of left field. "No! I'm not trying to do anything like that at all!"

Clockblocker bursts out laughing. "I know, I know, but you should have seen the look on your face!" He stops laughing, abruptly becoming serious. "_I_ should have seen the look on your face."

I respond, "I don't think I did too-"

But the volume on the television suddenly rises, and Aegis interrupts, voice taught with excitement. "Quiet! Skitter, you better watch this!"

I turn my head to look at the screen, and sit bolt upright in my chair. "Is that?"

"You?" Aegis says. "It is. You're pretty good."

The lithe figure in a blue armored bodysuit is almost dancing around an armored man's punches, always barely out of reach, though her return blows are ineffective, at best. Several times it almost looks like the armored man has her, but my eyes widen as black fire erupts into an aura around the cape, and she slips into black smoke, reforming and attacking immediately.

I recognize that armor, the way Wards unconscious on the ground. "That's Uber." I say. "Is that really what I look like?" I flinch when the screen-me makes a grab at Uber's leg, and gets kneed in the face for her trouble, but the image isn't that good because, by that time, the illusory fire is pouring grey smoke into the air, blocking the picture.

"And that's all we've seen of who might be the newest member of Brockton Bay's junior Protectorate team, the Wards-"

Aegis turns off the television. "I counted enhanced reflexes, momentary shapeshifting, and temporarily enhanced strength." He says. "Clockblocker?"

"Shadows reach towards you, and you can heal by sucking blood." He says. "You might want to add that to your notebook." I start, and he leans back, putting his hands over his face. "Armsmaster gave the rest of us notebooks too, last week. For keeping track of what your powers do in different situations, right?"

I hear footsteps, and they're too light to be anyone other than Vista's. "Hey."

"Hay is for horses." Vista grumbles, and space warps in front of her, looping space to let her walk around the table without turning. The youngest member of the Wards lays down in a beanbag chair by the television. Face first. "Saccharine warning." Her voice is muffled by the fabric, taking the sting out of her words.

"Clockblocker just said that, though." Aegis quips lightly. So this must be the way the Wards normally are. It feels nice, to be around people so at ease with each other.

Clockblocker stands up, leans over the table, and growls in a deep voice. "Nay."

Everyone cracks up, even me. I can't help it.

Kid Win's hoverboard slides across the floor at waist height, and space warps again to let Vista grab a big handful of popcorn as she rolls over.

Aegis looks at my notebook. "If you don't mind sharing what you've got so far, I'd like to get your powers in my head, get them circulating, even if what you know may not be your limits. I don't want to interrupt whatever Gallant thought was important enough to miss this for when he brings it in."

That makes sense, but still. . . "I don't know much, but my power seems focused on staying alive." I open the notebook to the first page, and flip pages as I name the effects I've noticed. "I have a sort of inner energy I can feel that lets me do things, that's what made me get hit when Shadow Stalker attacked, I thought I had enough left and didn't. When I use too much, it bleeds out in an illusory fire.

"I can turn into smoke for an instant, or a little longer, and I reappear just outside reach when I do. I can use my power to just be better at not being hit, too, but you already know all this."

"I don't." Vista reminds me. "I didn't even get to see you fight Uber, because he hit me from behind."

"I don't have to use anything to have shadows hide me, and I think I can jump a whole lot better, with another way to use my power." I finish. "That's all I've got. I think I'm a Breaker."

"You're stupid hard to hurt." Vista says through a mouthful of popcorn, then grabs some more from the bowl.

I flinch at the memory, just a little. "Right. I'm hard to hurt, so Brute too."

"I've got an idea," Clockblocker leans forward. "Really mine and Panacea's, but what if you're a Trump, and your ability was for helping you survive?"

"That would work." I nod, and write that down as well. "It's as good a shot as-

The elevator door dings again, and Gallant strides into the headquarters like he owns the entire building. "We've got clearance to eat at Fugly Bobs on Friday." He says, hands shoved into his waistband.

"But we eat there all the time?" Aegis asks.

"Not in uniform we don't." He shoots back.

"In uniform?" I ask. Capes eat at Fugly Bon's in uniform? "I'm not sure I-"

"If everybody doesn't come with, Panacea will feel really awkward." Vista sinks deeper into her beanbag chair as she says this.

Clockblocker perks back up. "Oh? Is someone else coming, besides Panacea?"

". . . Glory Girl." Gallant admits, after a long pause. When no one else speaks, he continues. "It _may_ be a date."

Clockblocker surges to his feet and slaps the silver-armored teen on the back. "Congratulations! It's about time you got the nerve up."

Vista slumps further into her beanbag chair, and crams her mouth full of buttery popcorn, staring resolutely at the news anchor silently talking to a frozen background of black smoke. The label in the corner of the screen says that it's a real news channel, not one of the 'cape news' programs. They're surely showing the same thing, I realize. It feels odd to know that, after so long watching them, I must be on them.

"So what do you say?" Aegis asks me, shocking me out of my introspection.

"To what?"

"To coming to Fugly Bob's with us in a few days, you know, as a Ward?" He explains. "It may be a little premature, I know it takes a few weeks to get the paperwork cleared up the chain, but really, as far as it goes with me? You were a member as soon as you said you weren't going to just wait back here."

Staring at the lenses of his mask in disbelief, I slump back into my chair, stunned. "Just like that?"

"Just like that." He nods, and waves his hand dismissively through the air. "Being on this team isn't something I have to do, I mean that I'm not in it for the trust fund and fame. This is something that's worthwhile, something worth doing."

Kid Win slides another bowl of popcorn onto the table, and sits down in the seat Clockblocker vacated. "Right." He says, and pulls up the bottom of his mask, tossing a kernel in his mouth absently. "It's all about attitude. You put your safety on the line for some people you'd barely met. That shows you're a good person. Everything else?"

Aegis tilts up his own faceplate to grab some popcorn as he complete's Kid Win's sentence. "We can work it out."

I ought to do something, I realize. I need to say something, do something to build some bonds with the people that are, spectacularly, considering me their friend. "I was only trying to help." I stall for time, wracking my brain for what I could do to reciprocate that trust. I look at Clockblocker, who's dragged Gallant into a corner and is offering advice to the other hero, who's visibly not paying attention, stealing glances at Vista every few seconds.

I want to be a hero, and here they are. "I just want to get above it all, out of the, the pettiness, I suppose." I say. "I just reacted before, and now I can _do_ something, so it should be a good thing, right?"

" It's why I call myself Aegis." Aegis agrees. "We're shields to protect the people that can't protect themselves."

"Well I call myself Kid Win because I'm awesome." The Tinker says, and I burst out laughing.

The atmosphere is relaxed enough that I think nothing of pulling up the bottom part of my mask as well, though it's uncomfortable bunched up around my nose, I can no longer resist the smell of the buttery goodness that is fresh popcorn.

Not one of us at the table speaks for the next few minutes, as we listen to Clockblocker offer his teammate ever more unlikely relationship advice, and I adjust how my mask sits every few bites, since it keeps wanting to slide back down into my mouth.

"That's about typical, really." Kid Win says to break the silence.

"Wha-" My mask slides down again, and I jerk it back up. "What is?"

"The mask." He explains. "They work best when they're not the stretchy one-size-fits-all kind, and face plates offer more protection anyway."

I grumble. "That isn't helping in the short them, though."

"Well," Aegis says. "How about- this." He drops something on the table, and it takes a second for me to recognize it. A pool of red fabric, with single shaded lens showing. I glance up at his unmasked face, then back to take a better look.

"I'm Carlos." He grins, and pulls his long black curly hair out of a hair compression cap.

Another bundle of fabric and plastic hits the table, this one a brighter red and gold. Kid Win laughs, and runs his fingers through his brown hair to straighten it. "Chris." He introduces himself. "And the girl sulking on the chair is Missy."

"Bite me." She replies laconically, but throws her emerald colored domino mask onto the table to join the growing pile.

I look at Gallant and Clockblocker, who's conversation has shifted into a spirited discussion about whether or not Glory Girl's parents would try to kill him to 'test him out'.

I'm not prepared to do this, mentally, but I'm backed into a corner. It wouldn't be fair not to show my own face after all this. It isn't a big deal, I tell myself as I pull the stretchy mask over my head, and remove the compression cap over my own hair, which is at least longer and better taken care of than Aeg- Carlos'. I've fought supervillains, though one was really more a drug dealer, and another was Uber. Just introducing myself to my teammates isn't anything special.

I wish my dad were here, that I'd told him what I'm planning first, but he's always told me that friends make things better, and he was right before. At least I know the Wards are the good guys.

"My name is Taylor Hebert." I say, and a load I didn't know I was carrying vanishes from my stomach like a vanished stone.

Behind me something drops to the floor, and the harsh sound of metal rings through the room. Clockblocker and Gallant quiet as Sophia Hess, the orchestrator of the bullies that had turned school into my daily hell, says, "You've got to be **fucking**joking."

No wonder.

Now _wonder_ Shadow Stalker had seemed so familiar. Sophia Hess, Shadow stalker? I'd never have believe it before now. The petty minded vicious girl that had bullied and hurt me for nearly two years was behind me.

My thoughts turn immediately to escape. Don't show weakness; don't let her know she's impacting me at all. I need an excuse to leave, not to be here anymore, with her. My father's on his way, Armsmaster said he'd have him brought over. I can just leave and wait for him out front.

You never show a bully your back. I stand, but wobble as I do so, steadying myself by grabbing the bowl of popcorn on the table. As soon as my fingertips brush against the golden kernels they blacken, rotting and falling apart in a wave of decay, and leave the bowl full of slimy mold.

"Still ruining everything you touch, aren't you?" Emma says. "You know they found the man you killed in your locker? He was _drained dry_ from what I saw, so it won't take long before they put the pieces together."

"Shadow Stalker!" Aegis shouts, and slams his hand on the table, making an ear-splitting crack to emphasize his words. "That was uncalled for. No matter what kind of history you two have, you're teammates now. Apologize."

Someone stood up for me? A glimmer of faint hope rises in my chest, stupid hope, I know.

"I'm sorry." She doesn't sound sorry at all, instead using the too-sincere voice that I've heard too often from the other bullies, but the hurt is fresh when Sophia uses it. She usually prefers more physical putdowns. But it's a familiar play, so the sting is only for a moment, no matter how deep it cuts. There are only so many times 'poor Taylor, I heard her history paper was missing its citation page', can make me flinch.

But then the spite flows back into her voice, the saccharine tone forgotten. "I'm sorry I worried about you. Fuck, I thought you were somebody who lived in the real world, after you fought Uber, but no- it's just boring Taylor. And a night in a locker really screw you up so much you triggered? God you're pathe-"

The lights explode.

Shards of glass and plastic from ruined monitors and overhead fluorescents spray over the room, leaving me in the middle of a circle of gleaming shards. "Three days." I grind out. It's all I can do to hold back the double tone creeping into my voice. My reflection in one of the larger shards of glass glows with the light shining out of my crimson eyes, the sole points on my face not covered in shadows.

"What?" Sophia says, and I can _feel_ the hidden fear in her voice. I fixate on that, the honest reaction that I've dragged out of her.

"Skitter- Taylor." Kid Win speaks up from next to me, having not moved from my side, but palming his laser pistol under the table. "Just stay calm and we can get this sorted out properly. Nobody thinks you killed the man in your locker- I mean-"

"I was in that locker, surrounded by filth and blood, for three. Days." I bite out. My hands twitch with newly discovered instincts, and my tongue touches extended canines.

"Cry me a river." Sofia says. "Can't you even control your powers? You're a menace. They have the body you stuffed in your locker in the morgue downstairs, and any time now they'll haul you off in-"

Aegis slams his hand into the table again, and the thick glass spiderwebs as another echoing BOOM of sound cuts off the speakers. "Shadow Stalker, if you say one more word you are _off_ my team, no matter what Piggot says!"

My power, the flood of ice inside me, is trying to get out, to be used in ways that I half-remember, but know that I can't use. I'm better than her, I'm going to be a hero no matter what happens, and Armsmaster already told me that Sophia is going to be taken care of. I've held on for a year and a half, I can stand another few minutes around her, no matter how many lies she spouts.

But a cold spark leaks past my self control, settles into the same space that makes me dodge better, and as it burns a new pattern into my mind I know- I just _know_, that she isn't lying about the body. "I could have." The words slip out in a whisper, and I turn wide eyes on Vista's own, where she stands pressed against the wall. "I don't remember."

Clockblocker and Gallant have left their corner, and are quickly closing the distance. "Nobody say anything." Clockblocker says. "No matter who said what, nobody is getting arrested, nobody is getting thrown out, and nobody is going to haul anyone off."

Still reeling from the shock and trying desperately to stop thinking about how I may have killed a man to drain his blood, to heal myself in the fugue state I'd been left in when I escaped the locker, I still notice the door next to the elevator slam open through the haze of foggy self-recriminations.

Armsmaster stands in the doorway, halberd lowered with lightning sparking around the head, backed up by three other members of the Protectorate. Beneath his visor, his mouth is pressed into a thin line.

He's here for someone, and we all know it.

After a terse moment he flicks his head, and his backup steps into the room behind him. Battery, a woman who can store her body's energy, then release it all at once. Velocity, a speedster that traded strength for speed. Triumph, who can project waves of penetrating force from his mouth.

The four capes present an imposing line in the red emergency lights.

At last, Armsmaster speaks the words that seal my fate. "Skitter, we have someone for you to see downstairs."

Downstairs, where the **corpse** is.

"No." I whisper. "No, no, no!" My whisper grows to a scream, and the Protectorate capes double over, clutching at their ears, but Armsmaster rips off his helmet and lunges for me, hand extended. I leap back, power flooding my legs as I move in an effortless dodge out of his reach, sailing back fifteen feet, out the window, and into empty space.

As I fall, I see Kid Win on his hoverboard, soaring out the window, silhouetted against the stormy sky by the red glow of his antigravity.

Then I hit the freezing water, and I realize that at least the Protectorate will probably cover up that I was a murderer. No need to lay guilt on the dead, after all.

Why had I thought I could be a hero?

And then the cold takes me, and my eyes drift closed.

-SWSiS-

A girl in a white and red dress hummed to herself as she bustled about her lab. Well, she'd borrowed it from a local high school, but everyone in it was just so rude to her that she'd forgotten why she'd come in the first place!

Of course, once she'd thoroughly ruined her dress, the girl had remembered. She needed to give Jack a birthday present!

So she hurried about the lab, hardly suitable- as it was a chemistry lab, but what could she do?

Darn it to heck and back, but she'd almost forgotten about her Jack's birthday! Just because she'd made a new friend didn't mean she had to forget about her old ones! A dainty hand slams into the table, and she has to grab the counter to stop the wobbling in her stool.

"Easy, easy." She calmed herself down, and wiped her hands on the hem of her once pristine dress. "I need to remember to pick up more aprons; they're no good when the crusties get in." Her singsong voice echoed through the empty tile hallways, and she noted with satisfaction that her main helper wrote it down on his notepad. So nice of him, even if he did need replacing soon, she thought with remorse.

The school was spotless, save for the hall outside the advanced chemistry lab. In there, hundreds of lockers had their doors and walls torn off. The hooks were occupied. A palette was loaded high with chemicals from the town's lone supermarket, and outside the fire exit lay a mound of furred bodies, a present from her big sister.

"So lucky, lucky, lucky, that they love me love me!" She chirps, and picks up a waste laden tray, slopping it through a hole her sister had made in the wall to the room next door. She'd put a mailbox in the gap (which had _barely_ fit!), and since it opened and closed she could call it the disposal shoot.

The tray was set down on the standalone counter, and she made sure to wash her hands on the inbuilt sink, which still worked mostly fine even if she was using it as a drain. She wouldn't need to, but she was rushed, which meant her materials weren't able to get good and dried out, again because she'd _forgotten Jack's birthday._

It was nearly unforgivable, forgetting your family's important days like that, but everyone could be forgiven! She'd just gotten a second chance herself because of her new friend, and now she could let everyone else have theirs too. "Just think," she smiled at her current project. "Soon you'll be all kinds of useful, not dull like you were before, and won't that be nice?"

Her project opened its mouth in a soundless groan, and the cute little words she'd written in dramatic loops on her forehead, chest, stomach, and hands glowed red. "I knew you'd agree sooner or later."

The few dozen students who had been outside, having physical education, when she'd come calling with big sister were beginning to scream again, "and I so dislike noise when I'm trying to work, don't I?"

Her helpers, already there were a few dozen, nodded dutifully. A clap of the hands attracted the attention of her wonderful helpers, so much longer lasting than her old ones. "Then go tell them to be quiet, I'm working over here, and if they're going to be mean and try to spoil my present. . . " She trailed off, and leveled a finger at the loudest bound captive outside the window.

"Never mind. I'll do it myself."

There was more screaming, louder than before, but after a minute or two it began to get quieter. Then it stopped completely, leaving only muffled moans, broken by the girl's cheerful voice as she sang under her breathe. ". . . Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies. . ."[/i]

Her helpers shuffled back in, and handed back her needle, and an empty spool. "Hm." The girl said, and frowned at the used supplies. "Are we out already?"

Her main helper nodded twice, once for each head.

"Sugar." The girl swore, and bit her lip in thought. "But, all right. Run on down to the supermarket, then, and hurry! There's only four hours left until midnight!"

Then she stepped back down from her stool, away from the table, and into the middle of the room.

Outside, fifty-four people lay in the grass in a line, bound and rendered mute.

When a flash of crimson light surged out of the classroom's two windows, and a procession of their former friends dragged another dozen of them inside, they screamed regardless.

Bonesaw waited until she was done with her snack before she wiped her mouth primly, and finished singing. "Ashes to ashes, we all fall _down._" She looked around, and motioned for her new helpers to put her next projects on the tables before she smiled, and it was the smile of a girl who was having the time of her life. "That was a nice break, but I guess it's back to work!"

Uncle Winters was right, this was loads of fun!

-SWSiS-

I drifted low in the water, past the violently churning swells and waves and deep, deep down where no sunlight shone. I closed my eyes as a reflex, to properly think, and focussed inward, falling deeper and deeper into a restful state until my back touches the silty bottom of the bay. When my eyes open again, I had reached a decision on how to achieve my current goals.

I needed to get out of the bay.

Estimating that I had used perhaps half of my air, I gathered my feet under me and leaped, propelling myself in great bounds through the murky, storm-tossed water until I reached the shallows, where I was tall enough to take in enough air not to drown.

Immediate safety concerns taken care of, I turned my thoughts back to the situation at hand. On second thought, it seemed unlikely that I had killed my father, and Armsmaster's helmet was widely known to contain a communications system, and an interview with a new cape would certainly have someone fact checking, and helping analyze data.

I nodded to a slender boy with long black hair sitting underneath a nearby bridge. He nodded back.

Since my escape from the locker my senses were sharper, my eyes better suited to picking out details, so I had reasonable cause to believe that my father was not dead. After all, if my father were missing, his coworkers would notify the police, who would have put out an notice that Armsmaster's helper would have had access to, and I would have noticed a reaction to that sort of news.

So, since I didn't kill my father, I was most likely not the reason he had come in, and my father was most likely downstairs, perfectly fine. That meant that Armsmaster must have come for Sophia, Shadow Stalker. Wards aren't supposed to use lethal force, and using an automobile as a mele weapon on the top floor of a parking deck seemed like lethal force to me.

Shadow Stalker went too far in the middle of the day, which likely meant she'd be hung out to dry, and probably taken in for questioning.

If she was a flight risk then that would explain the backup. Conclusion? I could probably go back to the oil rig the Wards and Protectorate use as their base, and be forgiven, but I don't need to.

Forgiveness could wait a while. Now that I was in what I recognize as one of the badder parts of town, I may as well look around for any gang activities that I can get rid of. Gangers, from what I've observed of their behaviours, were little more than organized bullies, and getting rid of the abuse of powers in Brockton Bay was. . . important, somehow.

The boy beneath the bridge was dry. He'd likely been there since before the storm began. He's looking back at me, eyes disinterested and lacking passion.

I wade further out of the water, examining him. Can I help him? Can I help others by driving him out of town? I need more information. "Hello." I say.

He replies. "It's wet."

Neither of us spoke.

"I just thought you should know." He continues after the silence. "Most people don't enjoy being wet."

I didn't care about being wet one way or the other, which would have surprised me if I wasn't feeling so. . . worn out. "I don't mind it." I say.

Silence passes between us again, and I join the boy in looking out over the bay, at the oil rig.

"I have an apartment. Want to come with?" He asks, and I nod.

Sleeping on the ground wouldn't be the best option, so I say "yes" after some consideration.

He held out a hand, and helped me climb up the artificial bank beneath the bridge. I debated just jumping for a moment, but decided that demonstrating my powers without a mask would be counterproductive, if I wanted a secret identity. Burning bridges would be a bad thing, and that would be a burned bridge, I knew.

That line of thought brought up another, I realized as I dried out beneath the bridge, with the slender boy, who seemed about my age. I wasn't wearing my mask, having left it on the Wards' dining table.

But that probably wasn't as much of a problem as it seemed at first. As long as I changed my costume's final design, and I wasn't planning on wearing a stock costume forever anyway, I could be anyone at all.

That was the point of wearing a costume, after all.

"Where's your place?" I ask, and he shrugged.

"Do you want to leave now?"

"There's no point in waiting."

The stranger nodded, then stepped back out into the torrential rain. He had to raise his voice to be audible over the clouds slapping the city in walls of water. "I thought you'd be more curious about why I'm out here, though."

I considered why I hadn't wondered that, and reach an answer by the time we were halfway down the block. "It had already happened, so it wasn't as important as what hasn't happened yet." I say. "You can't change the past, only the future, so that's what you should worry about."

The boy paused, just stopped in the middle of the block and stared at me.

"What?"

"I," He said slowly, enunciated every word. "Was waiting to see if anyone accidentally tripped off the outside of the Protectorate's headquarters."

Then he started walking again, and I followed alongside him.

As we traveled through town, I made out what I could of the buildings through the rain. Mostly warehouses, mostly abandoned. That put me in the northern section of town, up passed the boardwalk, and the touristy market, and into the dead territory that I remember the Merchants had laid claim to.

I made a mental tally of the area's weakest gang.

It's lead by Skidmark, a Shaker who could define a zone of 'less' and 'more' force by pointing his arms. I had fought him with Clockblocker recently, and he was presumably in custody.

Likewise for Squealer, a Tinker focusing on vehicles, and with a complete lack for subtlety and economy of space.

Until I'd met him myself, I didn't know about Trainwreck, but he was likely a Tinker as well, probably something to do with his mechanical limbs.

Other local gangs are the ABB and Empire Eighty-Eight, both of which were massively more powerful and effective than the Merchants. The ABB were an all Asian gang, lead by Lung and his leiftenent, Oni Lee. Empire Eight-Eight (E88 for short) was a white supremacist group lead by Kaiser, and had numerous other parahumans on their rolls.

In my eyes, the lot of them didn't need to be in this city.

I'd need to get rid of them all, in time, but it would be best to start with the Merchants. They'd be weakened by the loss of their leadership, however temporary, which made this sudden rainstorm the perfect cover to begin taking out the rank and file.

I was reminded of the perils of thinking so deeply while walking in the pouring rain when my leg slips out from under me, and I slam headfirst into a lone abandoned shopping cart, sending it flying along the rain slick ground and through a shop's glass pane door.

"Oops." I muttered, and climbed back to my feet none the worse for wear. "I didn't mean to do that."

The boy helps me to my feet again. "Not my fault."

I looked around for anyone who might have seen the vandalism, but saw no one. A glimpse of purple caught my eye, though.

Yes, that was exactly what I thought it was, a gang sign on the wall beside the door. "Merchants."

"Really?" The boy said, and pulled his hair out from in front of his face to get a better look. After a few moments, he deftly reaches through the hole in the glass door, turns the latch, and pushes it open. "Jackpot!"

"Why are you going inside?" I asked him.

He turned back to look at me as if I were speaking nonsense words. "Because the door's open, so I may as well enter?" Then he turns back to the small store's insides, and begins rustling through a stack of boxes, pulling off lids and peering inside one by one.

That. . . made a twisted kind of sense, I supposed. If someone was going to get blamed for breaking and entering, regardless of who the someone is, then having committed one should they not commit the other? Shaky logic.

"Or maybe it's just because It's forty degrees out, and pouring rain?" He calls out onto the street.

. . . I forgot that I didn't feel cold like a normal person any more, which was, logically, kind of awesome.

"All right. I'm done changing." He walked back out of the store carrying a cardboard box, and wearing a poncho. Wait-

"You were changing? Of course, into dry clothes." I realize as we again begin walking. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He flashed a grin at me. "In case you wanted to watch."

When my expected embarrassment failed to appear, his grin widened. "The name's Alec."

There are dozens of Taylors, so what could it hurt? "Mine is Taylor."

"We're almost there. Just one more block." He said. It was a small one, so it only took a minute to cross, and then I stepped out of the rain, and into Alec's apartment.

He threw open the door, and it hit the wall behind it with a thump, revealing a warm, richly decorated living room, with two armchairs and a small television. The mantle over the fireplace on the opposite wall had odd clumps that hadn't been dusted in a long time, as if a great deal of pictures had been removed. Actually, as I stepped inside, there were a lot of discolored patches on the walls. "Just sit down wherever. I think I've got some clothes in your size." He said after looking me up and down, then walked into a separate room. "And don't open anything up, there are things that I'd rather not show some random girl that climbed out of the bay, even if you are wearing spandex."

Soon I was drying off in front of the fireplace, feeling the heat of the orange flames soak into my skin, having changed in the apartment's bathroom as soon as Alec brought a spare change of functional, if slightly small, clothes. Pants and a collared shirt, both white.

"Dinner?" He asked from another room, presumably the kitchen.

Eating is an important part of keeping my body in good condition, even if it does take an unnecessary amount of time, so I agreed. "That would be a good idea."

Alec, having re entered the main room, rubbed his hands together to warm them as he joined me in front of the fireplace. "No preference?"

"No."

"Huh." He grunted, before grabbing a towel that was still mostly dry and wringing the moisture out of his own locks. His hair was almost as well taken care of as mine was, I noted. "Then you're in for a treat. I've found the most magnificent recipes, and you should prepare yourself- no, _brace_ yourself for the culinary masterpiece that will be unveiled in the next half hour."

He looked me in the eyes, bending over only slightly. He was fairly short, and I was tall, even sitting down. "Thick slices of sausage, tangy tomato sauce, and heaps of cheese all baked over a low flame."

I put the clues together. "You ordered pizza."

Alec smirks. "Dominos."

Dinner was filling, warm, and required none of the messy cleaning up that I remembered so well. But the fire still managed to go out before I ate the last slice.

"Here." I blinked when my host tossed a pair of mirrored black wraparound sunglasses at my face. "You've got an eye thing." Sure enough, when I looked at myself in the reflective plastic lenses I could see two glowing red rings surrounding my pupils. I put on the glasses, and Alec relaxes somewhat, vindicating my decision.

"Thank you." The response was wooden, meaningless without the emotional context normally attached to it, but I obeyed the societal norm. "I don't think I can feel many emotions right now." I explained, to mollify my host.

He didn't seem to care, though, instead turning on the small television and settling down with the remote. "And the entertainment of the night is-" he stopped talking, and I turned from the fire's embers to see what's distracted him. ". . . The hell is that?"

It took a moment, but I reached a conclusion before he spoke again. "It seems to be a corpse, or half of one."

"Why is on my TV? Doesn't the watershed start at nine down here? It's only seven!"

"It does start at nine." I said. "Turn the channel."

He smirked, but does so. "Can't take a little blood and guts?" He taunted me.

"Static, keep flipping." I said. "But I'm-"

I stopped. I was going to say that it did, but really. . . "It's just bits of what used to be a person." I murmured, half to myself. "I don't see why I should care either way."

Alec had turned the channel back to show the corpse. "It's the same picture, not even a news show." He said. "There's nothing else on either, all static."

We sat for a while, just ignoring the rain beating of the street outside, and then the light overhead fizzles, and goes dark with a puff of smoke.

"I think, I hazarded a hypothesis, "that my power is interfering with delicate electronics."

He looked askance at me in the light of the television. "And you didn't mention this earlier, why? Never mind- you're obviously a new cape. Stupid question. The important question is, what are we going to do _now_"

An idea formulated in the recesses of my mind, hazy connections being made and discarded in a flurry of mental gymnastics. I wanted to clean up the streets, that's a good way to put my goal, yes. I wanted to clean the gangs off the streets.

Why not start now?

-SWSiS-

"This is a terrible idea." Alec muttered at me as we walked down the streets of the docks, headed deep into the territory claimed by the Merchants.

"It makes perfect sense." I defended myself. "Skidmark, Squealer, and Trainwreck are all in custody, so the best time to strike their mundane members is in the present." I had to raise my voice to be heard over the pouring rain as we moved through the dark streets, lit only by the occasional streetlight that wasn't broken.

"It's dangerous. Druggies are crazy, and they don't play by normal rules." He snaps back.

The mental connection flipped, and I said, "You're afraid."

"I am not!" Alec quickened his pace to get in front of me, then pokes my side with a scepter. I was fairly sure he made it out of a lead pipe.

"If you don't feel safe fighting drugged up hobos, you are more than welcome to go back to your apartment." I offered, but knew he wouldn't accept. The kind of teenager with a renaissance fair outfit in his closet. He was wearing it now, under a parka. Tights, tall leather boots, and a ruffled shirt. He'd lent me a plain white mask, said it was his spare, and I was wearing my basic costume. Minus a few cuts in the abdomen, and the entire left arm, it was still in one piece.

"Of course I'm coming with you!" He snorted, somehow making it sound refined. "But we need a better plan than barging in through the front door of the warehouse, demanding they all surrender, and hoping they don't shoot us to death."

"That's a perfectly reasonable plan." I said dryly. "But you're missing something."

The warehouse Alec assured me was a gathering place for Merchants loomed overhead, and Alec sighed, and stood back to let me knock. "Is it the part where we don't get shot, because I'm rather taken with that part. Why am I even here anyway?"

"You were bored." I said, and raised my hand while pulling the cold flow of power to move first one way, then another, just like I had in my fight with Uber. Interestingly, only a little came quickly, the rest moved more slowly than the first group, and my power's overt aspects failed to trigger.

Alec caught my arm, and stepped in front of me. "Oh, yes. Thank you for reminding me." He said, and then rapped on the door with his scepter and shouted at the top of his lungs, "HE-LLO!"

A slat in the door slid back, revealing two bloodshot eyes. "The fuck do you want? We're busy."

Alec grinned, and bounced up and down. "I want to buy something, at a. . .bulk rate."

"Well come on in, then, mister high roller!" The man behind the door oiled, and with a click, the door was open.

Alec grinned, and I could see his smile take on a sinister slant as he twirled his scepter on his hand. "Ladies first." He said, and motioned me inside.

I stepped past him, and he closed the warehouse door behind me, closing us in the gloomy warehouse with a final click. A click that was echoed by the half dozen handguns pointed at us by an equal number of men.

"Well, well, well." The man who had been at the door bared his rotten teeth in a parody of a grin. "The valued customer brought his escort, and what a looker she is. I think," He tilts his head as if thinking; "I think our prices just went up, if you know what I'm talking about."

"There's no need to point weapons around. But you'll have to ask my friend about _that_, I don't speak for her." Alec waved his scepter disarmingly through the air in front of him, stepped up beside me, and whispered in my ear. "They're all yours."

I looked around the dingy room, empty save for dusty boxes used as improvised tables to hold plastic baggies, bins, and boxes. Then I considered the shaky aim of the men not ten feet in front of me. I should be afraid, I realized, afraid of messing up and getting shot, getting killed.

But I wasn't.

Fear had no hold on me, because I had a goal.

And these men, with needlemarks up their arms, their shaky hands and bloodshot eyes and the countless others like them, were leeches on Brockton Bay, leaches that were trying to bleed the people of it dry.

_They would not._

The overhead lights burst into a spray of hot glass.

Six handguns barked, and three sparked from their chambers, illuminating the room in flashes of orange light as the drug dealers fired, emptying their magazines into the wall behind where I once stood, but I've already moved, my body effortlessly slipped around their lines of fire until the weapons fell silent.

Alec held up a cigarette lighter to my right, the light from its feeble flame just barely illuminating the eight of us and the shoddy plywood and oil drum tables the Merchants were standing in front of.

"Surrender." I gave them one last chance, and felt my voice slipping into the odd two-tone resonance that I'd fought to keep the Wards from noticing. I didn't fight it this time, and let my words reverberate in my throat. "Leave this city, and never do harm here again."

One looked at another, the one with the longest beard, the greasiest hair. Greasy hair spat on the floor, and pulled a knife out of his belt and holds it low in front of him, point up. The others followed his lead, drawing an assortment of knives, pipes, and a lone machete. Greasy leered, "I'll show you harm, you little- AGH!"

He was interrupted by his arm suddenly seizing up for no apparent reason, and the force of his spasm drove his knife hand up, burying the blade into the meat of his shoulder with a sudden SHUNK!

"MY SHOULDER! MY SHOULDER!" He screamed as he rolled around on the ground.

There was a moment of stunned silence on behalf of everyone present.

"Well. That certainly explains why you had a costume ready to go." I commented dryly.

Alec tilted his head, and I got the impression that he was raising an eyebrow behind his mask. "You mean you didn't immediately think I was a parahuman?"

"I thought it was less likely than being in a play." I felt the need to defend my position. "You might also have had special interests."

One of the Merchants tried to interrupt us, snatching a bottle off of a nearby table and throwing it at Alec, who sidestepped it neatly. "Sorry." He said. "I completely forgot about you." Another lunge for a bottle was thwarted when the Merchant doubled over suddenly, slammed his head into the makeshift tabletop and slumped to the floor.

"Anyone going to interrupt me?" He said, holding his scepter in front of him threateningly.

The plywood board, disturbed by the Merchant's impact, fell on top of him with admirable timing, but the remaining four Merchants rushed at us, screaming obscenities and raising their weapons. Three rushed me, and the one with the machete tripped on his way to Alec.

I turned away from a wild strike with a length of pipe, then grabbed another's knife arm, wrenching him to the side and out of my way as I stalked forwards toward the third. The first stabbed at me with the knife again, but I was outside his range with a quick step. It was almost like stepping out of the way of their gunfire, my body simply taking the actions that would insure I was not hit.

I almost broke free of Trainwreck's mechanical grip. How strong was I?

An aura of black fire burst into existence around me, and the first two gangers yelped in surprise, drawing back in fear and aborting their attacks as they scrambled away, apparently afraid of the flames. I swung my fist underhand with all my strength, and it hit the gut of the third so hard that he crumpled around it.

He threw up on the front of my just cleaned costume, but I paid the sick no mind. It crumpled into dust after a moment under the black flames, coating its fallen originator as it fell from my costume to the floor.

I heard a sharp crack of sound, and an impact on my back shoved me to the ground.

"Yeah! How you like that you smug . . . little. . . shit." The Merchant whom Alec had made headbut a table had recovered, and reloaded his gun, and I felt my back as I stood back up. The semi-rigid carapace built into the suit's chest had been pierced, by my skin was not. Interesting.

I picked up a piece of plywood from where it sat on a quartet of old oil barrels, and felt the cold fire flood my arm as I hefted it one handed. Then I threw it at the remaining gunman, knocking him back into another table, which collapsed on top of him.

Alec must have taken care of another of the thugs, because only one remained standing.

"I surrender!" He pleaded, and dropped his knife, then kicked it away. I looked him in the eyes, and what he saw there must have frightened him. Because he whispered, "Mercy."

I could have killed him. Let his death serve as a warning to all the others like him, but I was already planning on cutting a swathe through his compatriots a mile wide.

I could have let him go. Let him spread word of my judgment, but my earlier reasoning applied to that as well, and there would be no guarantee that he wouldn't revert back to old habits.

It wouldn't make sense to kill him, I realized. I didn't want to be another bully, destroying everything that wasn't mine, but I couldn't just let him go either. Blood dripped onto my face as I stepped forward, looming over the man as he scrambled backwards in the dim light, and I remembered a warmth in my mouth, a rejuvenating breathe taken from someone that did not resist, refueling me, refilling

.

I grabbed his face and hauled him to his feet, then breathed** in.**

He convulsed, then went limp, still breathing, but unconscious. "That's convenient." I said, and went to the next moaning body, my reserves of the cold energy didn't feel full yet.

"Want to keep going?" Alec asked giddily, and I glanced at him where he stood by a table, a stuffed bag on his shoulder that I remembered being on the floor in the back of the room earlier. "This is more fun than I thought it would be."

Four warehouses later, I had five more bullet holes in my uniform, and Alec had decided it was time to stop for the night. "It's past midnight." He said while leaning against the wall of a run down supermarket. "And I'd like to get some rest, before I start making stupid mistakes- that last place, the hobo on PCP nearly got me with the table."

I considered for a moment.

True, Alec had been getting slower all night, his use of his power more sluggish, and I could tell that he'd been responding a fraction of a second slower than he had at the first warehouse. He _had_almost gotten his head caved in by a homeless man in the last stash site we'd raided, a small tea shop. The waitress, in particular, was especially vicious.

I could have continued on my own, but Alec was the one who knew where the Merchants were basing themselves. I wouldn't be able to act as effectively without him. I also had a much higher chance of surviving an encounter with a hostile parahuman with the odds in my favor. The fight with Uber springs into my mind. As soon as I ran out of power, he would have thrashed the floor with me, and held me, Vista, and Gallant hostage for Leet's release. While, to the best of my knowledge, Uber and Leet rated as less malevolent than the average fast food worker, the principle still stood.

Being overpowered, or stalled until I ran out of power and means to replenish it, and then taken hostage or killed would _not_be productive.

"I agree." I said. "We should head back to your apartment."

Without another word, Alec stretches, picks up his panapoly, and begins the walk home. As I followed, I observed that his parka is inflated outwards like a balloon, struggling to hold all of his gains within. "Those are likely stolen goods." I said.

"If I left it, someone else would have taken it instead." He said. "And destroying legal tender is a crime."

"What?" I'd never heard that before.

"True, it's the property of the treasury, or something like that."

The rain's let up somewhat, so since we were only a few feet away from each other we didn't have to raise our voices, though Alec shied away from actually coming within arms' reach. Apparently he was wary of the black flames and smoke rising from my body. "That's interesting."

"Yeah." Alec replied laxly. "Figure I should have a new name, you know?"

I replied shortly as well. "Yes. A secret identity is a valued resource, as New Wave has shown." New Wave, a pair of nuclear families formerly known as the Brockton Bay Brigade, went public with their secret identities, to show that parahumans should play by the same rules as everybody else. Within the week, one of their members had been murdered, and the others had been hounded from their jobs by the media.

"I heard about them. Don't they have kids our age?" Alec mused.

I nodded in response. "Panacea and Glory Girl are siblings, and the other family has a pair that are adults now."

After a few minutes' walk, Alec said, "I'll go by Regent."

"Regent?" I mulled it over. "The person in charge while royalty is not?"

"That's it!" He smiled under his mask, and then took on an effected tone, like an old man speaking mysterious wisdom. "They also tend to not like giving power back when the king returns."

"I think my powers are messing with my mind." I changed the subject casually. "I seem to be handling multiple brushes with death without significant emotions, or any at all."

"Nah." Alec, Regent, scoffed, and waved an overly puffy arm from within his parka. "You're probably just in shock, I know I was the first few times I beat a few people half to death."

"Shock does not normally last for twelve hours." I said. "At least I don't think it does."

"Hmph." Alec snorts. "You seem fine to me." Then he stopped, and we climbed up the steps to his apartment. When we reached the door, he tried to get to his keys to unlock it, without dropping any of his bags.

"Do you want me to hold some of those?" I volunteer, and he flashes a heart melting grin at me. At least, I'm fairly sure it would be heart melting if my emotions weren't as dead as someone shot in the heart. Someone who wasn't me.

"Thanks, ah- what's your cape name?" He held out a hand, and I grabbed hold of the three bags in it, having to struggle since my strength had returned to normal.

I debatet giving him the same name I'd given the PRT, Armsmaster, and the Wards, but in the end I couldn't think of another name to give. "She Who Skitters in Shadows, Skitter's fine though."

"Appropriate." Regent grunts, and shoulders the door to unstick it from its jam. "I can barely see you now that the fire's dying down."

"It is, isn't it." I said, and tried not to think of looming shadows with hateful masks.

Tried and failed.

"Come on, don't stand in the rain." Alec said, and it _was_ Alec, because he'd taken off his mask. "Or do stand in the rain, and catch cold for all I care."

I came inside. Alec clapped his hands together, then showed me to the couch. "It's not that I'm afraid that if I invite you to share, I'll wake up drained dry," he explained. "It's just that I'd rather not end up drained dry by the creepy vampire cape."

I was not irritated. At all. I wish that was annoying, but it wasn't that either.

"Tomorrow, if the rain keeps up the cover, we can hit some of the other places I know about!" Regent enthuses.

As I lay awake on the couch, a heavy blanket draped over me, I stare at the fresh lightbulb that had been screwed into the socket overhead. I'd decided to go home tomorrow, but should I?

Going home would put an end to my activities, stop the progress I was making in reducing the Merchants' operations. In addition, I had yet to find one of their production plants, only distribution centers, and because of the lateness of the night, there wasn't any of their product left. I had only managed to take out some of the middle men, which wasn't going to make a significant dent in their operations.

If I gave just one more day before going home, I'd have a chance to find one of the places that made the drugs the Merchants' peddled.

That would be significant.

I remembered something that I'd forgotten, the cell phone Armsmaster gave me. I retrieved the slim device from a pocket in my suit, from where it lay draped on a chair in front of the embers of the fire we'd rekindled earlier. Punching in my father's number was simple, easy, and I did so without hesitation.

"Taylor?" My dad's voice was tinny over the speaker, but the concern was blatant. "Taylor, is that you?"

"Hey dad."

"Are you all right?" He gasps, and I smile, reflexively. There's no emotion behind it, but there should be.

"I'm not fine, but I'm handling." I replied. "I'm sorry I missed you at the Protectorate Headquarters, but I had to get away."

"Get away from what? Taylor, you were gone for a week, and I heard something about you jumping off the rig, what happened?"

I cleared my throat. "I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to tell you."

"There was a _police cordon_ around school!" Danny said. "Just, just tell me if you're hurt."

"I'm not hurt," I say truthfully. He'd cope better until I can return if I could give him some good news. "I just don't want you to see me like this." Like my heart's been replaced with a rock.

The line is silent for almost half a minute, but when he spoke again my dad was noticeably calmer. "Don't do anything to get yourself hurt, Taylor. Are you safe?"

"I won't, and I am." I replied.

"Whatever's happened, I'm here for you, understand?" He asked.

I nodded. "I do understand. Thank you."

"I'll let you get to sleep then. Just- call me tomorrow too?"

"I'm not sure-"

"I know you don't want me to see something, or know about something," He interrupts me. "And you're probably just doing it because you don't think I can help, and you don't want me to go through the pain I do when you're in trouble, and I can't make it better for you, but just having you disappear like that. . . not knowing you're safe makes me worry so much, and it hurts worse than you can know."

I was struck at how well my dad knew me.

"You're only fifteen, and I'm not naive enough to ignore some of the signs, over the past few months. I'm here for you, just let me help."

"I'm not sure you can." I whisper.

"But you'll call?"

"I'll call. I promise."

"Good night, Taylor."

"Good night."

And so I fell asleep, determined to spend just one more day being an active hero, before going home to my father.

I slept in the next day, and so did Alec. But by noon we were both moderately awake, though the rain hadn't ceased, instead intensifying even more. Inside the hour, it had gotten so bad that the streets outside were as dark as twilight, covering the streets in nearly an inch of quickly flowing foul water as the storm drains overflowed. The rumbling bass echoes of thunder rolled through the city, and Alec and I both knew that going out in this weather was nearly suicidal.

It was during one such boom that someone knocked on the door. Once, twice, three times he knocked firmly.

I glanced at Alec from where I was washing a pan in the sink, and he glanced at me from his makeshift soda pyramid at the half table. "It's your place." I deferred, and double checked that I hadn't left a piece of my costume on by accident. I hadn't.

"Point." He admitted, and went to the entrance hall.

Five minutes passed, during which the door stayed open, and then Alec came back into the kitchen.

"Taylor," He said, voice somber, and he waved a tall, lean man in a black skintight super suit into the room with him. A white snake design coiled around from his head, wrapping around his body multiple times before terminating at his left foot. "This is Coil, he says he has an offer for us."

"An offer?" I asked, while I wracked my memories of trawling the Paranet for a mention of a cape named Coil. Nothing came to mind.

"I have been very discrete." Coil says, and his voice is smooth, disarming. "And I would like you two for something I'm putting together, a team. He folded his hands behind him, seemingly unknowing that behind him, Alec had slid a cutting knife free of the block, and was holding it up his sleeve.

I got the impression that he was looking me straight in the eyes when he said, "A team of heroes, independent of government control."

"Why would government control be an issue?" I asked.

Coil didn't move, except to speak. "The Parahuman Response Teams oversee the Wards, even the Protectorate, correct?" He said, like he was a teacher lecturing a class on some pivotal piece of information

"Yes." I knew that, everyone knew that. "The PRT acts as oversight, stopping capes that go too far either way before they become too great a threat."

"They also," Coil interrupted, "run the entire legal system where it applies to parahumans. Oh, the judge, or in the case of a jury trial, the jurors, are hardly wearing uniforms, but the rest of them? The extra bailiffs with their foam sprayers, the armed troopers that guard the prisoners after they've been sentenced guilty- and it _is_ nearly always guilty on all counts, the prison the truly dangerous ones are sent too?"

He stopped, and I knew what he was going to say before he did. "All run, all trained and paid for by the PRT."

"I don't understand why that would be a problem." I said. As I'd been listening, I remembered the previous night. When I'd drawn on my power, it had felt like there was a deeper layer, that wasn't as 'moving', for lack of a better word, as the rest of it. I carefully drew out a modicum of the slowly flowing power, and I was right, it was more ice than crackling lighting. I pulled more, feeling that I had about three times as much of the less subtle power as the icy part remaining, then moved what I'd drawn out in the same way that had let me tell that Sophia wasn't lying to me back at Wards HQ.

There was no slight pain, no blood dripping in a ring from my forehead, no aura of black fire and smoke.

I had a _stealth mode,_ and I should be able to tell if Coil were telling me any lies.

Coil's answer jolted me from my discovery. "I apologize, I tend to wax on the subject at times. Why does government control of your potential superhero career matter to you- oh don't be alarmed." He held up a hand. "I saw you on the news yesterday, very nice for a first try."

"If you have a point, please make it quickly." I said with a glance at the sky, in which the clouds were slowly clearing.

"The PRT has direct oversight over the Wards program." He said, as if expecting the news to have a great impact. Beside me, Regent nods agreement. "They will tell you what methods and targets are acceptable, and you will be forced to follow them."

That _would_ be inconvenient, I realized. I'd have to follow along, unable to choose how quickly to clean up the streets. They may even, and I balk at the very idea, tell me not to go on the offensive at all, instead only reacting to people like Uber and Leet, 'harmless' villains, not the people really hurting the city.

"I see you've realized what you would have to give up. Where there is a beurocracy over your head, you will find people who will exert power just because they can. And what better way than to stop you from growing to the best of your abilities, ah, what may I call you?"

"Skitter." I said, and lost myself in thought again, weighing whether or not the oversight in the Wards program would be a bad thing. Points had already been made against it, but in the Wards I would have access to experienced capes, and be trained by people who had already done what I was planning to do. You could put up with things for their long term payoff, and while Coil may be right about the government influence on the Protectorate, bringing all the tangles of corruption and petty power struggles with it, well.

Better if I began identifying the abusers of power in the system as soon as possible. You could always leave later, in the event that I can't stand the corruption.

"I don't think I would like to agree to anything like joining an independent team at this time." I said, and for the briefest of instants I saw something wrong, something different.

I was sure, for a moment that Coil's face was angled differently. But no, it was only the light hitting the white snake on his head at a different angle.

"I'll admit I didn't come expecting to make my case to you as well today, Skitter." Coil said. "I'll be in touch when I know how to meet your needs." I realized that I haven't gotten a single confirmation of falsehood from my power in the entire conversation. No lies, no manipulations. He really was just making his case.

He also wasn't lying when he said he'd be back as soon as he had leverage.

He turned, and walked down the steps, slowly and deliberately looking up and down the street before turning right and going down the sidewalk.

Right before he passed out of sight, the masked man paused, and looked up at the sky.

The rain turned into a torrent of stale, brackish, foul-smelling water in an instant, once again growing into a thunderstorm, darkening the city streets like it wasn't daylight. I wondered what time it was, and my power told me. Just after lunch, twenty-four hours since I tumbled from the oil rig.

I began to wonder, as I closed the door, if there was anything the frigid lightning that was my power couldn't do. I could turn into an immaterial smoke form for an instant, slide between gunshots, leap fantastic distances, casually pick up lumber I couldn't have lifted with both hands in one. Even in my deadened state, I knew that not knowing the extent of my powers was a bad idea, and a foreboding feeling washed over me.

I needed to find out whatever I can about my power as soon as possible. Ideally I could just find out with everyone else in training sessions with the Wards, but what could I use now?

"Regent?"

"Yes, Taylor?"

"How many more Merchants' meeting places do you know about?"

-SWSiS-

Interlude 4

"And that makes another four today." Regent said.

He looked down at his hand, wrapped tightly around his scepter, and unclenched his fingers, massaging them with his other. He pointed it outwards again, sweeping the stirring Merchant in front of him to the ground as his leg jerked up, knocking him off balance for the final time.

Regent ignored the sound the drug dealer's skull made when it hit the hardwood floor. He'd be fine. Probably.

He looked across the room, and leaned on the table in front of him. The tables in this warehouse were real tables, the folding kind where the legs collapsed back under the body. Skitter hadn't broken any of them so far. She hadn't broken any of the gang members either, which surprised Regent as much as anything else.

Skitter was _strong_ when she wanted to be, not parahuman strong, but judging from the bruises he'd seen on the last three places he'd brought her tonight, she was doing at least as much harm as his fancy lead pipe was.

Maybe he ought to put something inside it, he thought. Perhaps a taser would make sense, it would be just the kind of cheap trick to make fights as short as possible.

He didn't want to work, but kicking- he meant _raiding_ the Merchants while they were down had netted him enough to think about getting some decent body armor with his take of the proceeds. Oh yes, his take.

He hadn't told Taylor yet, but he was holding onto a good portion for her. He did the math again as he watched the girl in the dark blue super suit smash her closed fist into yet another of the dirty men, one who didn't know when to lay down and get up, or just high.

Regent leveled his scepter again, and the still standing man, definitely some kind of substance abuse going on, slammed his head forwards, into Skitter's next punch. Fifty-fifty split for the two of them, and then half of her's as a finder's fee, he'd decided that was fair. 25/75, in his favor. Yeah, he had enough for some nice bullet resistant stuff, maybe even second generation Tinker offshoots, like the PRT used.

Like the suit Skitter was using, not quite bulletproof, but good enough for whatever junk guns the Merchants had scrounged up. A handful of tiny puncture marks showed the four times she'd been shot in the back over that night and the previous two days, showing clear skin beneath.

On the other hand, maybe it was less the armor, and more that Taylor was fucking bulletproof. Maybe it was a little of both? Who knew?

He'd just look it up on the internet later. Parahumans Online probably had a topic, and the search bar worked wonders if you actually knew how to use it.

"Regent, toss me some ties? I ran out." Skitter asked, and he pulled a handful of plastic zip ties out of a pocket on his parka, tossing them to her underhanded.

She was more than willing to secure all of the Merchants herself, so he let her. No point in fighting over who got to manhandle diseased homeless people. Yeah, that was an experiment he had no desire to remember. What had he been on when he had that brilliant idea?

He shook his head to clear the lingering tactile memories of grime, dirt, sweat, and worse things besides, Alec- or as he'd labeled himself, Regent- moved to the important part of the evening. Looting the lucre.

Product went in one bag, money in another, and any maps or important looking notes went in his pockets, for future examination. Now all he had to do was grab their wallets, and-

"Pass me the drugs." Skitter said dispassionately, but then again, he'd known her for a little over two days now, and she'd emoted less than, well. . .

It was like her heart was a rock.

Regent sighed, then tossed it across the table. One of these times she was going to forget that step, he thought as she walked to the toilet in back room of the dilapidated shop, then flushed enough product to triple his take for the night down. At least she didn't mind him keeping the money. That was where he drew the line. Well, there and cape fights. If, for some reason, the Merchants managed to scrounge up some cape muscle, he letting her handle it without any (obvious) assistance on his part. His power wasn't the most offensive kind, and he was perfectly aware that most capes would wipe the floor with him in a fair fight.

That was why he was comfortable hiding behind the bulletproof girl, letting her take the risks in the sights of the gangers. If anyone was getting killed in the middle of a rainy night by a drugged up hobo, it wasn't going to be him.

And the rain, how could he forget about the rain?

He secured his latest bag to a carabiner on the inside of his parka, and joined Skitter as she left the building. As he and his faintly burning companion stopped, he peered at the street signs, double checking his bearings. "Up to the Trainyard next, I think." I shouted over the pouring rain. "I don't think there are any more in this area, so it's the Ship Graveyard or there."

It was already twelve midnight, and it had been three days since he'd found her coming out of the bay. He still hadn't asked why she'd jumped out of the window at the Protectorate's headquarters like that. But he didn't really care, whatever the answer was.

Ahead, he could see Skitter holding her small phone to her ear beneath a pawn shop's awning.

"-Fifteenth and Wilson, more Merchants. I am fine, yes. Moving to the next." A click, and the phone closed.

"You know, last night, when you called your dad again?" Regent asked. "When you passed me the phone, I really didn't expect to end up talking to Miss Militia."

"I didn't either." Skitter shrugged, and Alec spared a moment to gather his thoughts again.

"Yeah, you want to know what she told me?"

"I suspect you will tell me regardless."

Regent blinked. "Was that a joke?"

"No." Skitter replied.

". . . She told me that your dad said to give you space, so she'd give you time to get out of this funk you're in." And that she'd blow off his kneecaps if, later on, Skitter regretted anything happening he could have reasonably prevented. "But are you sure you don't want to go back instead? It's past midnight, and I'm usually asleep by now."

She paused, and he held a hand to his face in an approximation of a yawn. The crimson raindrops pouring in buckets from the sky hit his parka, and shattered into normal water, just like what happened when the uncanny rain hit anything else. "We still haven't found their production center." She said.

"We can coordinate better tomorrow. Maybe you can call your teammates in the Wards and set something up." He suggested. Maybe she was get the hint?

Skitter nodded, and Regent smiled slightly in relief.

His kneecaps were safe.

On their way back to his apartment, he most especially didn't think about a man in a black suit with a snake design on it, and an offer.


End file.
